Torching the pier with
Su Tung-p’o, Mayakovsky, little John the Conqueroo
& the Jesuit surf team as light filtered down through the
sweet summer smog
& Mexican rock & roll made the sidewalk crooked
on a re-direct from aliens who were handing out popsicles
Ocean Park the summer of 1975
& I was wiping the rain from my drugstore RayBans
like Rimbaud at Punta Baja
The sky blue ’64 El Camino had a backstory that would
make Coleridge weep into his sharkskin wetsuit
with trouble in mind blues tipping the pagoda stool
I wonder where the sea breeze goes
when it isn’t here?
9.
She said Love is not a dream returning
beneath a sky the color of a sea stone
drenched in corrugated steel
I need a surfboard shaped like my life I said
She hands me a speargun
& a dose of drizzling fog-
mist from an early Sunday morning in July
so promulgated between tides
There’s sand in my ear & a million reasons
the air was seasoned with salt-
mist & car exhaust & your heart was like the T’ang Dynasty
edged in rust & Mexican turquoise
bending like a spoon to the flame
It’s always summertime somewhere
June 27 - July 14
