i was a narrow waving tulip. i slept for several hours.

when i awoke he was standing there, watching over me.

the amp was there and the guitar was there. he grabbed my feet

and we started laughing and kissing.

we were both very happy and made love quickly. like a salutaion.

he fell asleep inside of me. i eased out of bed. there was no reverb on the amp

so i washed my hair instead.it was down to my shoulders and the color of copper.

i cut crusader style.

i drew a thin line blue line connecting my eyes and a vertical line down

my forehead thru the center of my nose. i washed again then i washed his feet.

he was still and dreaming. i gathered his clothes in a buncle with the exception

of his blue coat. i could not imagine him wihtout it. i draped it over the wicker chair and brushed the collar with

the assured strokes of a chambermaid.he was lying there in a wrinkled shirt.

the contours of his shirt crumpled like newspaper. adrenalin coursed thru me.

a jagged racer charged thru my veins.

my fingers were sausages-shiny and pulsing-full of crazy energy.

the guitar felt good in my hands. i didnt plug it in.

i was racing with time and memory. i imagined him standing beside me concentrating

on disitegration and bending notes. we were on the stage in a stadium and the lights were low and mean.

i was in a state of temporary surrender. song on the radio: bend for thee. i am bending

in half in service to him, for myself, for the moment and soon everything is forgotten.

memory is replaces with energy.

i am moving through a dense landscape lush and tropic.

i am bending like a manic willow, like a finger in pan.

only the moment exists.

sleeping he knows it. and dead so he would also know it.

/

his clothes i sacrificed. i salvaged nothing. i borrowed the car and rode out of town. pass the long shopping plazas.

pass the spaced out beauties in purple half boots. pass the sex shops and the downtown club with its aluminum stage like the belly of a brouler.

i rode for a long time trying not to conjure his face-his consuming face and his silence.

/

everything eventually repeats itself. in the cool breath of dusk i already sense a point of boiling.

perhaps there is a mutual lack of edge. i have a last drink. tears not words pour.

something is brewing, however vague.

it is there lurking like a saint in the thick of the eucalyptus. deep and dense encounter with

many little deaths.

it was not the first time i had left a guitar behind.

x