The light of Tokyo, that halo
cradling the edge of space, jars
even the heavens. By midnight
Stephen’s ghost falls.

For him, I miss
the last train home, and for him
I dance in this Reggae bar
like a drunk GI, arms wrapped

around a Japanese woman I'll never
say a word to. No way that's good art,
he'd say, now just two weeks
bodiless, no more cracked ribs,
inhalators, oxygen machine. Now
whipping and darting, weaving air
into trails of light—Which good art needs;
Or so he said...

I tilt back my head and let the strobes
blind me. Through my closed eyes, blots
of light still in my sockets, I see
Stephen's face twice in one image:

Planets quiver like the heads
of Kabuki actors before their last
dramatic pose—one of those
same planets sparks through the galaxy

Like the lost corpse of a star.


Copyright © Kevin Dobbs, 1999.  All Rights Reserved.