‘But there is something colossal about any human figure when that individual becomes truly and thoroughly human…

He spoke frequently of the past, it is true, not as something dead and forgotten however, but rather as something which we carry within us, something which fructifies the present and makes the future inviting…

He had endless time on his hands, which in itself is the mark of a great soul.’

-H.Miller

My imagination is a constellation

which sits atop your elbow;

my thoughts are the clouds which fall

upon your diamond eyes-

we nudge a bit closer till our thighs disappear,

busy beneath the night.

Your delicate skin,

fragrant of smoke, cherry soft,

where are your sleeping thoughts?

I can see in the corner of your eye a waterfall-

our toes quietly talking,

our feet brushing off the cold,

our arms are just extensions

of the valleys we call home-

how I long to be a part of your subtle ways,

of your language and your tongue.

4

She showers and then she leaves,

Billy the Kid and his bubbly water thoughts-

I abandon the dream I have been writing each and every night,

of you and your watercolor eyes that I imagine in the landscape I am painting-

the furnace and the factory like titans grinning in the distance over the rolling tumbleweeds-

            ‘There, do you see the way the gazelle fawns, bent over your island?’

3

The story of the nefarious fish,

Billy the Kid, memory number 34-

‘But was it you who had wore the everlasting gown of the heavens, doused in a trembling umbel of flowers?’

Turn the vase over and watch all the memories fall,

there is beauty in what survives.

I gave her the book of the grotesque in the parlor of the watercolor fishes-

someday my love we will visit behind the thick glass walls,

I have seen us walk there, hand in hand, it is not far off.

The steam billows above in tufts and I return from the alleys of a broken Kansas night.

I am here now and will remain,

even in the showers of all the burning coal and ashes.

Your silhouette is the shape of spring,

becoming of the night,

of a conversation upon a table,

outlined in the valley of your palms

-your bent elbows climb into your arms,

as if to say, come, meet me upon my shoulder.