"Are Humans Smarter Than Clouds and Waves"

at Key West sunrise all the band members appear on stage

and go through their act


clouds gold-and-raspberry paintbrushes

waves wet rocks flying-feather-things



do they say to themselves

I do not want to die

I want a café con leche

I want to fly forever through this turquoise sky

I want to be loved by everyone



as I sometimes do

on the pier

at 6:27 a.m.

"On Contemplating Oval Stones In Barcelona From My Front Porch In Key West"

why seek oval stones in Barcelona

artful architecture

slurping shapes of sandpile steeples cornices and such

Catalan concoctions of

stubborn verbs

conjugations wandering from Madrid’s strict path

come back to your constricted island

the tumble-bum scrum of

hip-hop hope

asphalt lanes

and Hemingwegian derring-do



the sand truck dumps

a dream of drug-dulled dozing on the beach

Paradise Itself the website says

here the stones are weathered other

un-sleek lumps and gritty bits

coral crushed a billion years into



insensate ordinariness

looking at you without nuance just itself

hence the need for false eyelashes mascara neon pasties and

oh yes

a fabulous Patti-Page-pink boa (she was Clara Ann Fowler before the change)



come

look at the unglamorous marl

the front walk’s rooster shit

half-chewed chicken bones strewn streetwise

the fawning frangipani cooing the camera’s eye

tourist hawkers hooking their day’s pay

reeling them in like sleepy snappers unawares



do not ask what is it

come let us…buy the ticket

to the Fantasy

but that’s ok too

cuz the second day it’s

the same old play





it’s the is-ness nothing less or more

the dumb-dog quiddity of time and place

let it be what it is

and you too

Be