The larger part of him has dropped out of the race.
It is time to rejoice and drink gin
menacing the room with its distortions

and what a flower says at night painted and hung
about our vanity and motion.
There is time enough for several more songs

or two more songs or just one
but Jim has closed the book again.
I guess the words will have to be our own.

When he went out to the forest, his mother closed the door and wept.
When he went out to the road his mother warned him:
You would do well to remember

who you are and where you are from
but you never look or listen.
The larger part of him has dropped out of the race

it is time now for rejoicing and more gin
menacing the room with its distortions,
the big heads all lolling like grass in the wind.

After Virginia I came to this room,
says the flower slowly to no one.
Jim opens the book to a song about us

written for us to repeat in this room.
Quickly the picture emerges:
bits of black oil and bits of the red,

her left cheek sickled by the moon
and a bit of green oil and blue,
lots of the orange and a fair stretch of still-naked canvas

touched by a line at the bottom a sort of off-pink
unlike a sunset, calling its absence to mind,
a bit of black ink and a bit of red ink

sickling the one vast leg that is a tree,
green and blue ink in dumb touches,
white ink and segments of endlessnesses

touched up with pencil the color of pencil
not unlike a mind, calling final dullnesses to mind
but Jim has closed the book again.