One day

A webbed

Blonde

Mop

Framing

A scrunched

Grin

Sidled out of

The cooking place~

A little like a

Scrambled

Unknown Soldier

With no

Clear past

And a future

Staggering

Forlornly

With a knapsack

Of backpacking

Questions

~

And there were many one days~

Some James Dean rebellions~

A shred of Byronic romance~

A slow cowboy of all things gaiety~

A sliver of Dylan's gravely flair~

Till finally emerging

Cautiously

As a zero joker~

A small watcher

Of Batman wings

On a dark knight

Of nights

~

But

Like

The star of

Michael Dransfield~

Young

Drugged

And

Dreaming odd dreams

Till Good Friday

Wiped him away~

Ground zero locked his moccasins

In muddy

Boggy

Footprints~

~

Old Perth is so far away~

His eternal heartland~

~

And

Matilda

Must waltz

Alone

~~~~~~~~~

This is MY poem in response to the following news sources -Heath Ledger found dead at NY apartment - National Nine News - 23.01.08 + In Stetson or Wig - he's hard to pin down - New York Times - 4.11.07

P.S. James Dean (actor) + Bob Dylan(singer) + Michael Dransfield (Australian poet) = the dimensions of Heath Ledger to me! Wow could he act! His acting was pure music and poetry from the depths. He spent his later years between U.S.A. and Australia. Hence I gave the poem artists from both worlds. But for me, poetry is always the spirit of the artist. And so I chose young Australian poet Michael Dransfield. He too was a young voice whose dialogue ended abruptly!

Conducting a tour of the house, which he is renting for a few months, he made wry remarks about the art. One painting depicts a crowd of creatures who appear to be in hell, but who seem determined to extract as much sexual pleasure as they can from their eternity of free time; Mr. Ledger has turned another one around and hung it upside down, to no apparent ill advantage...

An open bag with clothes spilling out lay on the floor of the master bedroom. "I'm kind of addicted to moving," Mr. Ledger said, perhaps on account of having had to shuttle back and forth after his parents' divorce, when he was 11. He carries his interests around with him, and his kitchen table was awash in objects: a chess set, assorted books, various empty glasses, items of clothing. Here too was his Joker diary, which he began compiling four months before filming began. It is filled with images and thoughts helpful to the Joker back story, like a list of things the Joker would find funny. (AIDS is one of them.) Mr. Ledger seemed almost embarrassed that the book had been spotted, as if he had been caught trying to get extra credit in school...

Also on the table is a winsome photograph of Mr. Ledger's daughter, Matilda, now a toddler. (Mr. Ledger met Matilda's mother, the actress Michelle Williams, while filming "Brokeback Mountain" and fell into a very public whirlwind romance and then into loved-up domestication in Brooklyn; they both appear together in "I'm Not There" but have recently separated. He is leery of talking about their relationship, but heaps spontaneous praise on Ms. Williams's performance.)...

Mr. Ledger was born in Perth, Australia, a place so far away, he said, that "sometimes when you're there, it feels like the earth really is flat, and you're sitting right on the edge."...

One of the things that struck him most about the Dylan who emerges in "I'm Not There," he said, was Dylan's continual effort to resist easy categorization and his willingness to "recreate himself and not conform to people's ambitions to put him in a box."

That is how Mr. Ledger feels too, and he likes to keep an element of surprise, for the world at large and for himself.

"Some people find their shtick," he said. "I've never figured out who ‘Heath Ledger' is on film: ‘This is what you expect when you hire me, and it will be recognizable.'"

He continued: "People always feel compelled to sum you up, to presume that they have you and can describe you. That's fine. But there are many stories inside of me and a lot I want to achieve outside of one flat note."