Japanese Lanterns

An empty afternoon the day
before Doomsday

about 30 summer vacations ago

I was given to coked-up knuckle games
shaving while looking into a picture of
Walt Whitman

What was it glazed yr eyes?

love or drugs
either way I learned the formula

although I couldn’t make it thru the
approval process for
a sub-prime future exile

I could only sit there & stare
at a stand of eucalyptus in the distance
shimmering in the sun

to me it looked like the broken
silver blue surface
of the sea