AstroglideFunkBeach Blues
Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Small Grains of Sand
I’m the Poet and I say:
“It was Sunday, at sunrise,
and my fingers tore out white troughs for the low tide.”
I say, “We made love.”
I say, “It was The Sexiest Scene:
The softcotton pink towel—
The clouds running like white mascara against
black panties against red horizon against compact
mirror.”
I say, “I remember the small grains of sand!”
I say, “It was raw, agonizing,
beautiful.”
Yes! I say, “I was the salt-smelling gull!”
I say, “It was the cool-blue, apathetic universe
that drew me in like a hor-mone whirlpool!”
I say, “She and I were a barracuda of stars!”
I say, “She and I were a lighthouse of lighthouses!”
I say, “She and I shared a cigarette
under a blacklight
with unicorns in the shapes of Ecstasy pills
dancing in our hands.”
I say, “We were two schools of yellow fish reeling
towards the center
but the center
could not hold.”
But now I’ll tell you:
She and I fucked on a rainy weekday afternoon after I'd met her in a small bar called Tiki’s on Redwood and Ocean three days before when she was drunk and needed a cigarette and I was drunk and needed a blowjob. We met up for lunch on Tuesday and we talked about our hometowns our hobbies our friends and after, we walked the beach and ended up in her hotel room and started drinking seven dollar unflavored rum from a complementary plastic cup. I made a move and then I realized it was awkward and it was clumsy and it was ugly. And despite my better sense, I couldn’t make her come; though, even I didn’t come, so I left giving her ten dollars and a big “sorry!” and a pair of socks that I forgot to put on in my leaving. There was no sunrise lighthouse barracuda of stars. There was no unicorn whirlpool horizon. There was only small grains of sand sprinkled on her bed; and now, I can only find them in the deepest corners of my asscrack.