March 12 Venice Beach

March 12 Venice Beach


sitting on top of misplaced granite
i watch these wicked waves break with rocky New England bombast

the wavesplash
shockingly cold

the sky
a lie
of the summer yet-to-be

June and July don't exist now
and here
where cat-quick crabs magnetically move
over the stony jumble
amid my braincoral thoughts of other oceans
and the creature I will always be and
simultaneously of O'Neill
likewise haunted by the sea but oh-so-much-more unhappily
gin-tossed
on the rocks
in the shadows
anemones hide, retracted from the sun
their purple pulpy arms pulled in
withdrawn
they wait
as I do
on powers moving


and on the Police Station behind the break
here's the evidence
of the power that can pour forth
poets' quotes soften the strongbronzed arm of The Law
carved like a surfer's wake
words on a curving wall
is it an epitaph after the fall
a funeral for what was or a plea for what could be?
not even the writers know
the future or the past of their prehistory
but at least they got in the flow and got it down so the moment would never get
wiped out
look up at that wall
see what lived in
sea and sand and sin
for better or for verse
Exene and Viggo
are still together there
and Jim Morrison makes his point - all stoned and concrete
these thoughts and their thinkers
some whole some beautifully broken
once so liquid and mutable
now stand fixed for all to see
under the iron V for venice
by the spray-painted dayglo palms