“My muse staggers in a couple of times a week, smelling of week-old cheese, kerosene, and urinal cakes. The slept-in grayish suit jacket and pants have lost several fights on the road to cleanliness. The mountain man neck beard is speckled with gray and other colors from things I shudder to guess. Unsteady on his feet as usual, he bobs toward me, about to impart his latest, wheezing with his porta-potty breath. He says . . .”

Then I always wake up. Usually, I remember the ideas; sometimes I expand. Mostly, I make it all up, sort of like this.