Far Rockaway

moments later,

silly isn’t it,

I become numb after the rush

standing at

Beach 28^th st,

devastated

we lost a tomato plant

given to indifference,

sunlight still imminent

yesterday we kissed Aunt Doris goodbye,

then another cold July bus ride

this time back

down into the Manhattan jungle

why I am still shivering

all wet inside from the rain,

enduringly obsolete,

second guessing simple decisions

while determined to endure freedom

sending you away

so crazy from love,

so smitten,

now preferring TMonk

with his cigarettes and shades,

choosing Rockaway

this horrible ugliness,

this naked crashing water,

this violent beach of solitude

and already unfaithful

a few hours since you left,

sleeping with Mother Ocean,

swimming back to her secret womb

that could not be shared with you,

jealous lover

afraid of sleep tonight

that I might forget this distant planet,

my 6^th house karma,

afraid of you

red eyed and lost somewhere on that forsaken St. Louis bus

escaping my useless time zone

back here across America

then hours later

still numb

shaking all over

having just ducked from a thrown bottle,

sidewalk below trembling

digesting distant jets from Kennedy

across these twilight plots of seaweed fields

reality bites on my ass hard,

should I recognize you again

or pretend independence,

both mocking and deflating

at midnight

young men making off with stolen bicycles

laughing in strange languages

past glass shattered streets,

paying little attention to these devastated buildings

that soon will feed the chilly rain swept sea

and I lurk here without witness,

hoarsely whispering from these battered boardwalks,

to reach out to those long ago invading hearts,

to fathom their broken down bungalows,

to again embrace their summer laughter

melted away eons ago

this Rockaway is a keyless door

leading back to a worn out wilted bungalow,

where my father’s watch has been stolen,

where my lion is off grazing somewhere inside

this immense A Train drug crazed stomach,

where my demented toxic eyes vomit up acid rain,

where any reason or sense

has seeped from my mind

then I call to antediluvian Rockaway:

untangle and push ahead

to where a resurgent Rockaway steps up,

to where that 52st music once more pulsates along fresh boardwalk waves,

to where dizzy locomotives again hop back along buzzing railroad tracks,

to where hopeless romantics wade their way out into the blind Atlantic

then straggle back anywhere into America,

to where the children are treasured

and this beach their sandcastle playground

7/6/77

Far Rockaway, NY