a Copper moon

i slept in the Victoria Hotel

down in old Mexico
where i walked on handmade tiles
colored in deep indigo.

Eliot wasn't on my floor
nor was he in the bar
listening to the young gringo
strumming on an old guitar.

i heard he was still swimming
in a pool without a sound
with a handful of wasteland dust
i remembered he had found.

he was wearing a huge sombrero
pulled tightly against his cheek,
with a slip knot fully made
and still showing the receipt.

my margarita had no salt
but i drank it all the same
to not offend the bartender
who called me by my name.

a Spanish lady with the melons
she was proposing to sell
approached the nervous tourist
ringing the front desk bell.

i came to walk the canyon
so deep it smelled of death,
where spirits wear an empty mask
and take away your breath.

a train would leave the station
soon maybe the next day
and though tempted by those melons,
i knew i shouldn't stay.

my coach was full of writers
down on their luck & drunk
on mescal which they all consumed
until their voices shrunk.

i stopped above the canyon walls
and began the long decent
into darkness at highest noon
i wondered what it meant?

i heard the hidden waterfall
down in these depths of doom,
and supped on endless poetry
beneath a Copper moon.