[This one for S.]
….just listen to ‘em: cryin’ out, “Me! Lookit me!”
as if. oh there’s a boy checking me out. walking down by the wetstuff. it’s not my imagination. is he a hustler? he looks too young for even the depravedhungry of this city.
the Beach is louder than the kids who play here. messier than play.
this is the school of play.
the Beach lies still gettin’ worked over 24/7 with a foot massage and various night time inspections and scratchings free of charge.
the Beach is high and dry. it has cold feet.
Upland, it’s guardians, the blue quail cry, “Chee-ca-go Chee-ca-go!
2 times as they run away from their nests.
the Beach is swept by the breezes/storms/the hot sun/
cooled nightly by the spray.
--home to a zillion garbage-picking litter sweepers from
the sand flies, sorting out the quick and the dead to
the sand crabs (peering intently myopically/politically
from their transient burrows wond’rin’
if you’ll move yer head)
the seagulls the sand birds like the sanderlings who run out dart back before the surging waves spearing morsals we’re too slow to see bubbling up between the waves…pokin’ right round where i tossed a hang nail--ulp--
they flew 1,000 of miles for this trove.
sand dabs were nibbling at my toes, in the shallow,
wishing now
pieces of me’d wash down.
sea urchins urgin’ me in, “Sleep here!” they cry. “With us…
with us…!”
i’m feeling da love, start makin’ an angel in the sand
with my arms and legs, it’s snowing in Chi-town.
sand mites, sand bacteria...sand viruses...catch that…painting my bones with their saliva in their dreams.
but i am un-incorporated.
you are my only incorporation--otherwise i, l’hommie, have not one sure foot on this dumb deaf and gorging gorgeous planet, my desire.
i threw my brains at your feet and and i breathed free.
one grain of sand a tiny world a half a pair of hands clapping in a poet’s audience. for a poet. self a grain of sand.
in the poetic beach of eco-wordia.
we all want to write our truth one kaliedoscopic mish-mash
of colored motion in the maze of our emotion so everyonecanseeit.
to dream of capturing the silently splashing waves of thought…
to assess, devolve, reconstruct, redux the sound of one’s own silence. silly peurile pearls of fearful, revelatory, insightful, harmonious, enlightening, clear-ities from points of view so dispartate that not all can be true to everyone everything, allthetime... that... starts...
from silence…
hiding --for one fleeting minute-- from cacaphony.
silence that begins with listening...to hear
the quietude, dude!
of the void.
whereas everyone wants to speak; [ if just for a piece of the action. ]
to think is to listen. i listen to the waves that pour over me at my desk. in bed. here, as the sands trickle through my fingers...
i think in language therefore i write, or therefore i am, or was,
if these neighbors of mine have their way.
we are small and countless: grains of sand.
everyone wants to be counted; no one wants to stand up for anything.
[ that horrid risk of being washed away. ]
we’d be majestic mountains, vast prairies, fixed,
promontories, unfeelingly sturdy, heartless, rock-like immutables.
so hard-ass we’d rather float off in space than join the party.
[ somehow less scary than being in one place all the time:
eternally trapped. visited never visiting: no one invites the mountain down, the cape across the bay, the valley: to come on up an’ see us sometime.]
everybody wants to know the ANSWER, but nobody wants to read.
everyone wants to get in the game, no one wants to practice.
everyone wants to be a hero; no one wants to risk.
everyone wants to kill something, nobody wants to get shot.
everyone wants to be free, and yet, is repulsed by politics:
If you don’t get into politics, politics will get into you.
everyone wants to change the world, but nobody wants to change.
every poet wants to make her guesses too deep to get:
every grain of sand wants to be a beach.
---o---
...there’s a boy keeps looking at me…
my eyes half closed. waiting. glancing upland at suspect armies of cohorts, all 14 with daggars, arrastra’j’oes, they call ‘em in Brazil. They give me the Creeps. This is His Hashtag World.
Wanna rest in the hot sand? whole world wants a bite.
Penguin lying in the sloshing waves-exhausted.
..mermen rising from the waves. mermaids laughing…
.this water’s too cold.
for
joy
.
.
.
everyone looking up land
