Charged against me,
The body electric like a long-lost, Californian song.
He was a spider passing through
My populous city now cob-webbed.

An open road,
Horse, my master.
A wound-dresser who clung to cleavage,
Pioneer of rolling earth.

Battle-wrecked after twenty years of absence,
I sang through days with absinthe.
Memory eroding the naked and the wan
As if forgotten centuries.

My final days singed with the fire
As the last lilacs bloomed.