A Dream Record, June 8th, 1955.
The title is literal, A Dream Record.
A drunken night in my house.
Shhh.
I
don't want to corrupt you.
A drunken night in my house,
San Francisco,
I lay asleep, darkness,
these are all separated by colons.
A drunken night in my house,
San Francisco,
I lay asleep, darkness.
I revisited Mexico City
and saw Joan Burrows leaning
forward in a garden chair,
arms on her knees.
She studied me with clear eyes
and ironic smile,
her face restored to a fine beauty,
tequila and salt had made strange
before the bullet in her brow.
We talked of a life since then.
Well, what's Burroughs doing
now?
Bill on earth, North Africa.
Where's Julie staying then,
with your parents?
Oh, in Karawack?
Jack still jumps
with the same beat genius as before,
notebooks filled with Buddha.
I hope he makes it, she laughed.
Is Hunky still in the can?
No, last time I saw him on Times Square.
in the house Lucien,
married, drunk,
and golden in the East.
You, new kicks in the West.
Then I knew she was a dream
and questioned her.
Joan, what kind of
knowledge have the dead?
Can they still love these 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.