i am Lew Welch hurrying
into the hills, vapid fumes of hope streaming behind me;
the entrails of an animal thought extinct.
the gun stashed
(not even my friends know i like guns. well they do now.),
but uncomfortable against my skinny ribs, elementally exposed.
rap rap rapid words
bubbling so furiously you could ride them
to the mountain top, if such a thing. you know.
And this damn gun.
the stars blinking on, the day slinking off.
the night welcoming; the salt earth
beckoning my tired bones and feet that
move independently as does that lizard’s eyes.
i forget which. i forget which.
After all, this is just a story.
i am the silence hurrying
down the barrel, down the goat track.
i can’t get there fast enough. (what
does it mean to disappear? tell me
that.)
the place i’ll know or it will know; a
mutual concurrence of exhaustion,
singing like cooling rocks and beasts under the clear eyes of desert.
the names of these slopes and valleys
an unrequited love. (dimming now but methinks
that’s just the light.) musical and terrifying. as if San Fran or Chicago never existed.
and why i took it or why it took me
as mysterious as the word
‘posthumous’.
And then there’s this thing the gun wants; an irrefutable quiet.
as if Lew Welch never existed.