the Face of Life

I walk into a dive bar

in a luckless town

in a beat country

in a lost world

and I sit next to

Charles Bukowski

and Leonard Cohen

and Jack Kerouac.

After a few beers

I tell them their work

fascinates me;

it makes me so sad,

like a kind of sadness that

isn't invoked but resurrected;

as though they were reminding me of

the laughing,

the true Face of Life,

which is white:

absolutely blank.

It is sad because we paint it

all the colours of the rainbow

but each time it rains

it washes away our work

and our face is reflected in the

blank Face of Life

and our soul is reflected in the

hollow Head of Life.

They say take a seat

and I do

and we talk for many hours.

It takes me a long time to realize

I am speaking

to their ghosts.