“It was the drugs,”
              they said,
“the trauma”
“the loneliness,”
loading him up with excuses
              he had no business
              nor inclination to carry.

He was busy,
                    always.

Ideas, drawings, paintings
            inventions, stories
                              political campaigns
                                          music, movies,

             shooting out of him
                              all hours of the day or night.

Leafy green things, alive and vibrant.

      though in the winter he would turn statue outside
                                  naked
                                        cold

                          for hours alone
                                no one to prune the eccentricities
                                      or take him inside

      and he would call me sometimes
            to talk through the night;
screaming at me of
                        decay, darkness, the hollow in himself
                    but never saying any of it out loud

Like a dead tallow tree bursting with life.