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Poetry
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American Summer
Poems written while traveling.
Aloft in Santa Cruz
1: Aloft in Santa Cruz With a little smoke and a bottle of rice wine I approach my 72nd year. Drifting back into a 4th world where youths scream affixed to a roller coaster while waves dutifully crash upon the crowded beach. 2: Ostinado While lying in bed in a rented beach house quietly reading with my wife —the oddness of being in a different room. The pleasantness of being in a different house. The silence between waves pounding against the shore, then an aquatic ostinato... The questions that arise from things being different. 3: Your Average Family's Summer Vacation Hoping to escape the valley heat we rented a beach house near the boardwalk—old, but nicely refurbished—and if you listened beyond the always crashing waves and the mid-summer's thickening sea haze, like clockwork one could hear the collected screams flung from the Giant Dipper now cresting the first rise. 4: Aloft in the Night Harbor seals barking to the night. Somewhere nearby someone is listening to 50s jazz. Stepping outside to listen— running the length of the pier party lights. 5: The Luminous Beings of Santa Cruz I was sitting in a sidewalk brewery enjoying a "There Does Not Exist Return to Earth Coffee/Vanilla Oatmeal Stout" watching the luminous beings of Santa Cruz drift by through the tourists and aging harlequin downtown residents and the poets heading to the bookstore and the well-dressed homeless man who randomly spat torrid insults at anyone willing to pass by and at that moment I felt inclined to agree with the chalk-marked sign at the corner of Pacific & Cathcart which read: you are exactly where you need to be. 6: And Now It's Your Turn To Be 60 It now seems it all lead to this: you drive a utility cart casually through the little ins and outs on the boardwalk arcade with an earpiece in your ear, a coiled cord leading to an object affixed to your left hip. Generally the topic is listless chatter, boredom, until you are directed to quell a minor issue currently occurring behind the Tilt-A-Whirl. And each little time that little regret you know as your life, it grows a little bigger. 7: Henry Cowell1 / Henry Cowell2 The sudden wonder of a redwood grove. Burn scars. Jagged roots. Dense silence. The heavy metal clang of a struggling steam engine drawing the logs away. ( Henry went to prison over a blowjob. ) 1 Henry Cowell State Park (CA) 2 Henry Cowell, American composer back | ToC | next
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