The Dude Abides in a Globalized World

Verstrickt - Entangled 22 x 32 cm - watercolor on Yupo

THE DUDE ABIDES IN A GLOBALIZED WORLD

The heat’s rising appareled in odors

of fabric softener, hamburger smoke, stagnant creek

water wafting up to us through the leaves   

as we pass the bong and sip White Russians    

all day long. Thus without benefit of lucid transition   

we’re curled up near a dovecote on a Greek island

or leaning against the Tower of Pisa. You see, Dude,

we could be anywhere and still think we’re somewhere else,

Globalization not merely a “chaotic drift of technologies”  

but a series of artifacts and flavors meeting up

in one distinctly otherish location, each object 

   roughly positioned in its own

immaculate strangeness. There’s a corn dog stand

nearby, and twenty yards away a van

   from which Tex-Mex is dispensed

to Swedish tourists. It’s jazz made in Algeria,

Dude, a Wagner festival in Seattle. I’ve been working on this poem,

gentle reader, since landfall and have no idea if it’s good enough

for you nor am I sure what it “means” half the time

thoughts like seedlings  

scattered over white paper, struggling to take root

and go crazy, yet we’re happy here, the Dude and I, including

a modest contingent of groupies down on the beach,

partly because it smells like jasmine and warm nutmeg

   and partly because there’s a bowling alley adjacent to

a shattered amphitheater its broken statue

   of Marlon Brando wearing sunglasses.