A Picture and a Poem Takashi Murakami conjures a furious vision in response to the poet Matthew Dickman's rumination on love, death and the silver screen. Diane and I sitting in the dark like sitting in a death you actually want, a death you have always wished for, looking toward the lights of Hollywood, the long legs of swimmers, cocktails and rum made out of water and iodine. Earlier that day something like twelve city blocks crumbled inside me every time I thought of you and how walking toward her always felt perfect like a silver key with a red ribbon announcing its specialness and how I would suddenly burn away like a shot of whiskey some bride-to-be dropped a match into. Somewhere Johnny Depp is sleeping or turning to his right because a woman is there and has touched his elbow with the soft cloud of her fingers, or he's facing the mirror and listening to all the gods inside him begin to rage; the god of childhood and the god of his mother, his father. Diane and I are standing on a street corner together in the world, after the credits, in the crushed-ice rain, looking westward toward the dark-sunglass- Coppertone-white-beach-heaven that waits for us and us alone.