This Is a Dream

c drunken night in my house with a boy, San Francisco: I lay asleep darkness I went back to Mexico City and saw Joan Burroughs leaning forward in a garden chair, arms on her knees. She studied me with clear eyes and downcast smile, her face restored to a fine beauty tequila and salt had made strange before the bullet in her brow We talked of life since then Well, what's Burroughs doing now? Bill on Earth, he's in North cfrica. Oh, and Kerouac still junps with the same beat genius as before notebooks filled with Buddha I hope he makes it, she laughed Is Huncke still in the can? No last time I saw him on Times Square cnd how is Kenney? Married, drunk ad golden in the East. You? New loves in the West Then I knew she was a dream: and questioned her Joan, what kind of knowledge have the dead? can you still love your mortal acquaintances? What do you remember of us? She faded in front of me--The next instant I saw her rain-stained tombstone rear an illegible epitaph under the gnarled branch of a small tree in the wild grass of an unvisited garden in Mexico