The modern man tumbling through the tumbleweeds like a land fish- a man rides his bicycle late in the night in a town, somewhere, sometime. Progress. Rolling. He peddles in the cold where in of doors it is warm by a fire. The crackling logs suggest the voice of the disillusioned. A steel mill closes but what for? And the voice carries on in the timber we continue to let fall. It is ok, it is not a civilization. I read some things at night which become the shadows of the following day, lurking somewhere within the garden. A woman, beautiful like bronze- beautiful in its solidity, in its mineral form- she waits quietly with her arms at her sides. I watch, suspended from above her mountain eyes. If I approach her it is over. The actuality of the moment fascinates more than the moment actually happening. So I wait. Dumbstruck, like loves loose ghost. And for a century she stirs not, only does she turn the air into bread, the rain into wine and I am lustful, I lust for her, yet to go to her would be the death of the dream. So I wait, wanting more than the cleavage she has shown me from afar. The modern man crumbling into a word. It is the disillusionment we have quite forgotten in the cars; the highways pale in comparison to the clouds which they sit beneath. It was a red car that carried so much steam, it was a green car which killed us all. See the café, lit up as she spreads her thighs beneath the drawing of a table? It has been drawn down and out on that road which leads to Winesburg, Ohio, but he took the train, amen, god bless, and I laugh, I cough, I snicker and blow my nose as another car floats into the nameless ocean then drowns. Still she is waiting, my Madonna of the rainy night. She is ageless like a plate. Her palate consists of gold, sit with me from above and watch the way her breasts fall into her stomach. I have driven very far but I have seen what the world can do to a man; what a man can do to the world. Women, perhaps women, and another man passes but is he the same man as before? I cannot tell. Dear roses will you answer, or is it to cold to pierce the brisk evening air with you beautiful thorns…