Beach read

I’m scribbling stanzas of
wild eyed poetry,
hasty words jotted
across the page of a
spiral bound
notebook.
April damned near
faded into May,
a young girl
stretched face down on
an orange blanket,
waves
rumbling in
from Wast Africa
tumbling over and over
words
of distant explorers still pressed
against the hot breath
of the distant Sahara..
to end here,
in late spring in Ft. Lauderdale.

A lady of middle years squeezed
into a lavender bikini
reads romance,
digs her toes into
the wet sand,
hot breath of
melanoma muttering
Sun gods
frighten her
for a moment
but she hastens
back to the beach read…

I write another stanza but it is
so hard. What about
an easy beach read for a change.
What about a simple clean exit.
Include the best of the best,
don’t miss anything.
A book
missing its last
chapter
is
failure.

Louis L’Amour rides again
at the Cat 5 Bar, a shirtless overweight
local sips a Mai Tai as he reads
oblivious to the churning
the humming the hot beach beat
pounding surf.
Hot iron on the high plains,
hot sand
more
hot, hot. hot.

It’s cool inside now says the
last smoker in North America as
she exhales a white/blue plume
of 1950s Americana into the
lifeless afternoon air, and she’s
waving the only newspaper
in the western hemisphere.
She says she’s despondent
because of the rental market.
Screw the investors she says.
And screw the politicians and
the Russian oil
oligarchs.
Read the papers,
they’re taking over.
They’re coming in now
like daylight
through the blinds
of a cheap motel —
and they’re driving up the
insurance rates.

A man of the cloth
passes by like a
grey ghost of the Apocalypse.
A worn King James Version
under his arm,
pamphlets
in his hand,
hot in a dark jacket
and dark pants
and white Sam Smith sneakers.
Have faith he says, to no one
in particular.