(Not poetry, but here it is anyway.)
Last night the American Gothic cathedral that is Richard Brautigan visited me in my sleep. With the enchantment of his words he turned me into a watermelon and floated me across the Pacific Ocean.
Together we walked around the Haight Ashbury. Well, I walked, he floated. We both tried our darndest to love the tourist trash that now own that sacred ground. He took me back in time, showed me his apartment, where he worked, where he refused to do anything but what his talent demanded. I understood.
We walked and floated in silence, the silence of ourselves. At first I was a little disappointed, being in the company of the great writer I was expecting to see words glistening in the California sun like trout in a stream, occasionally leaping into the air for the sheer delight of jumping. I would have been happy if he'd just shown me a sign, the words "trout stream this way". I guess I was hoping to impress him, surface like a whale and blow him away with a salty spout of cleverness, but I felt that no words was part of the lesson.
He showed me a woman so beautiful that she caused traffic accidents wherever she went. I understood.
As morning approached his words turned my blood into wine, he carried me home in a holy grail. I awoke with the taste of wine on my lips, and the only words that he spoke all night in my mind.
"Kent Parkstreet, you are loved."
I understood. Trout stream this way.
Parkstreet
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