I have read and reread him.  His prose is excellent and borders on the poetical and transcendental---he conveys his ideas very well and nothing is obscure to me.  He's melancholic but not tragic;
in his dark despair, he still loves life; noting that life is brief, he opens his heart and mind to its possibilities and contradictions;
he lived by what he wrote; he conquered life and death in his unflinching faith in the ultimate decency of things.

In his smile, there was irony and, in his looks, he was a distant dreamer.

The fan whirls while the room rests in silence
That sound used to bug me.
The silence

It felt deafening
Too overwhelming and uncontrollable to be enjoyed
It was relentless
And I hated it

I think
Because it scared me
Because silence is lonely

To be alone is one thing
There can be noise all around you
But to be lonely is another

But
Today I sat in the silence while my fan whirled around the room
And as I watched you slumber

I enjoyed the silence
It was the ambiance to the sunlight kissing your cheek
The silence will always be uncontrollable, relentless, and overwhelming.
But, those are the things I love about you too.

So I sat
As the fan whirled while the rest of the room sits in silence
And the sound bugs me no longer.

And then
the night
comes flooding
in, like
a spilled beer.

Fear is a
rabid bat;
fatally
infecting.

Loneliness is
an ice cube
in a bathtub
melt-
ing
slow-
ly.

Love is a
flat toad in
the road of
life.

Hope is a
broken dish,
an empty
pocket,
a shattered dream.

Life is a sparrow
in the cat's mouth,
an abscessed
tooth, with no
antibiotic.
It's a whale
in a frozen
ocean;
an eagle in the
city.

Insanity is
digging for the
courage to
continue
day after
day
after day.

I still see them with their faces
squashed into empty syringes
almost lifeless with less life to
live every day,

like a recurring nightmare
they're
always somewhere there,
in shop doorways, park
pathways,

she's
laid out for the undertaker,
no one can wake her,
he's clucking, no luck in
finding his dealer,

I steal away,
steer clear and try to forget
I was ever here

To get back
in the game,
I need one
good hit.
A horse with
early lick;
that has more
heart than
Joe Louis
and Jake
LaMotta
combined.
I need decent odds,
at least 8-1.
The racing
gods have to
smile on me
one more time.
At least for
6 furlongs,
and then baby,
I'm back in the
game.