The green lipstick
was a dead giveaway
& measured
in intervals like beach tar
but only when
the heart drops like a pelican
& the haze
settles in behind your sunglasses
like something
that can only be found in
Diebenkorn’s Ocean Park series
though scarred
like the underside of a skateboard
I took every
possible detour getting here
any number of
which could have resulted in
blurred vision
or feelings of euphoria
but having
mastered the art of walking Spanish
I was uniquely
qualified to spill a Bloody Mary into
a Malibu
swimming pool shaped like the pale ocean sky…
Such passion is
usually reserved for those with some cachet
though peeling
rubber in the clinic parking lot
certainly didn’t
hurt any
it was kind of
like a skin disease nobody wants to talk about
set to the music
of a plastic souvenir ukulele
& the pale
ocean sky, remember?
it was like a roll
of film that had never been processed
