put your cigar out, let me gypsy your hands
away from gripping stories, trains, rails
I am wearing your worn aviators
with impressions taken from your face
so let me buy you a new jacket
and let me pay for your past taxes
let me write off your wars

come on, down this old-fashioned
errand of feasts removed as I remember
I have to run with the bulls in Pamplona
I have to leave a trail in the dust
I have to mail Dylan some boots

You are me at my best end
I am as horrible as you ever started
off headlong into wrestling icebergs
away from the end of the line
apprised nobly, in cold fiction

every one of them thinks
they could have been your friend
you and I know those unborn promises
the length of a life where everyone is your lover
had or having no time for the great depressions

I was your unclaimed and nameless imagined friend, Ernest
and I am your friend now
the phantom outside your door
who beckoned you to step forward
who beckoned the future with its blind cruelty and
merciless farewells
to my own birth in arms

to the future that was waiting
past sunshine and also roses
where I remain nameless without you
burrowing up the last beauty as a beast hoping
in a lost generation
I can save you at least

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