The beautiful dead

11:38 p.m.

desert milk moon

streets sharpened and

peeled back in poems

sitting in my study with a

book of Jeffers next to a

play by Eliot

a drive across the oceans

of ink

of boulevards pronounced

in smoke and sweat

decades adding up and creating

a feel of Faust

of Cervantes

milk moon

and flags in blue fire

reading the heavyweights

plucked like stones

from the shelf.

Tonight’s a night for them.

A Machiavelli moon

lit high above

a Sun Tzu street

enough of our genius

without them we’d be nothing left

to have gone before us took guts

the blood on the page,

theirs,

the suns of Neruda

gripped in the fist

of moderns,

our fingers still fleshed

at midnight

beating the hours back

because of them

I sit here and think about what

they’ve left behind

rolling hills of words

for feed

the sun-torn expanse

bleeding and spilling

into ours

dropping down from

them into us

our hearts’

excuse for laughter

for understanding failure

for victory against

the bullshit

I sit here and write into

the midnight hour

high on the words

of beautiful madmen

once so brilliant of eye.

Tonight’s a night for them,

while I stroke these keys

and reach out

across their oceans of

ink

all bravado aside

all my own bullshit

dropped away

sitting here behind

the machine

reaching with everything

I have

to be a speck of

dust shining

in their

skulls.