Come sit with me now
on this beach
2 thousand miles
from Sin City &
twelve hundred miles
from the Verrazano.
Join me in the rebellion.
Choose your gear
wisely, bring your
Chaise lounge circa 1979,
and your lime green bikini.
Sit near the water.
Sit so close you can hear
the muddled masses
crying out from
across the water.
They whisper sweet,
in timeless incognito
voices,
that rebound off the
sunken pillars of great stones
of the lost Atlantis…

Be still — it’s nearly high tide
and dinner is in the slow cooker.
The red wine is cold and waiting.
Come sit with me now before
the ages take us too.

Is this our refuge?
Or is this our fate?
She asks me this as
we lie upon the
white unbroken
sands of
Miami Beach.
Only hours
before –
we drank
white wine
and toasted the
snowbirds
down from
the Cape
and New Jersey
and
Grosse Point.

There’s no
bad weather
for us she
says,
I can put it
all behind me.

Not me
said I.
I have
no time
to be idle.
I’ll spend my
days writing
poetry
and volunteering
for
beach cleanup.

Then I’ll read Nietzsche,
she says:
It’s all happened before,
and will happen again.

Then I go:
Let’s order a bottle of
absinthe and we
can drink easily
in the long shadows
of late evening.
We can press Old Man Time’s
patience to the limit.

She says:
Tic toc, let the old fool
unwind like the Seth Thomas
clock on your Grandma Pearl’s
mantle.

Bring your easel, I say,
you can paint evening
better than anyone.

I tried meditation once,
as they told me,
‘it will clear your mind’
Why clear it,
 I said back
to them.

 I’ll just have
to re-load it
won’t I?

But you will be
at peace
they said,
and I returned
fire and said
screw Peace
give me
low-level conflict
and
 a quiet place to sleep
at night.

It will restore your soul
 they said
but I told them
souls are
deeply personal
matters.
If they can be restored
the cost might
be prohibitive.

But don’t you want to
resonate with the Universe
they said.
And I told them
that I had given
up on that.

Don’t turn around
there’s nothing to see.

Even if you want to look
don’t do it, remember,
it’s an archive
on the big Guy’s
celestial hard drive.

Ahead are the stars –
elusive little pin-pricks
aren’t they?
Sitting out there,
some close,
others
a quintillion miles
away.

Look too long at the
nearest one you’ll
go blind.

Look for furthest one,
you’ll die before you find it.

Pick Logical Star.

It’s the one you could pick off with
one of those amusement park
.22 rifles.
Give it a name.

Call her Harry.

It’s your star now.
Do it before the late night
fog
rolls in from the bay.
Above all,
don’t look back.