Vacation in the Tropics

Vacation in the Tropics - Urlaub in den Tropen 36 x 48 cm mixed media on paper

LIFE IS A BEACH

                                    

First, an unconventional

colloquial statement

what the fuck is this shit

(watch your language, girl)

as the wind just about tears

your head off, bleak Baltic

sandbar shreds and tatters

of foam sliced finer by the cutting

edge of a force seven son of a

beach, yes, a beach, eaten alive by flux & reflux

everything the same & not

the same unlike Lesbos where in light

that penetrated and pealed back the phenomenal

world there was nothing underneath and

everything stayed unique, unambiguous, loads of sand

three miles long, more or less bare of people

the sea a liquefaction of quiet blue silk

a pair of immoderately attractive

lesbians a few yards from us

across a dirt road where they rented

a nice little house, every morning the more fem of the two

stomping off to the bakery in high

heels & mini skirt & in a huff

her tall boyishly butch elegantly dark lover stretched out

in bed reading a magazine, smoking a doob

on Mykonos Paradise Beach was a visit to the zoo

here a penis, there a breast, white powdery sand

filtering thorough fingers, filling the cracks, killing us

a clichéd metaphor but useful

think of hour glasses and sandy windswept sundials, etc.

in the hotel bar a PowerPoint

teaser on the efficacy of mass delusion

had us begging for more, voting for less

the idea of progress creates trust in the future   makes

credit (growth) possible   speaking of Australia

when I was ten or eleven I wondered who 

would win in a fight a great white or a killer 

whale and then I saw a human

so big space made room for him

while he preened like a model

like a priest who relishes

the contradictions of his faith.  

If you believe in my beach, I’ll believe in yours.