What We Should Have Done In Big Sur

We should have stopped
at Miller’s Library.
I heard they’ve got
his skeleton
behind glass.
But certain parts of it
have kept growing.
No one knows why.
Now it looks like
John Merrick’s head
too big for a hat, hands
of uneven size, one foot
a brick.
His penis is contained
in an old beer can. It
resembles preserved fruit. His
testicles and anus
in a similar cavity—the
urn of a French waiter.
We should have modeled ourselves
after his collection of
toads and lizards who live in
shoebox coffins,
his tongue wrapped around a grape
that they couldn’t pry off, his jaw
like a goddamn stone hammer.
We should have built our own
library there, a cemetery, a library
of bones,
I said
as we looked over an honest-to-god
cliff.
It gets abrupt, you said and closed the door.
We were on our way
back
to San Francisco then.