I was in the cheap seats behind the popcorn
stand where only the drunks and half-wits sit.
Couldn’t see the show but the beach
was close by and out of the surf
came a “sandhog” like a little anteater,
its mouth a wide vacuum cleaner
of corrugated fiberglass. It snapped
at my ankles but I warded it off with a beer
can and listened to his gritty song,
some kind of advice about not having
to change your identity: In America
they considered us bums,
underachievers at best,
but I was absolutely alive
on a workday morning street,
free to be whoever I wanted
under the hood to do the necessary
repairs. I went at it with my electric
toothbrush but I needed a new
head. When I politely inquired
of the big woman behind the hardware
counter she said it’s a shame
you don’t understand the algorithms
that run your life. How well I knew
she meant make money from higher math
and I said the hell with moving the needle,
you sew a seam or get stuck,
screw the risk scores,
the clinical drivers, the prying drones.
If God led Mr. Hyde to Venetian Hills
I’m a monkey’s uncle. I’m happy to lie
down on a big swing and spin
in slow circles. It’s still very squishy
but there are a lot of interesting people,
migrating loons at lunch in the harbor,
tiny scarlet buds of a flowering cherry,
winking and smiling its branches
lovely knees and elbows flexing
in a breeze that is beginning
to feel a little too cold
for April.








After the cataclysm wrenched from the ocean floor
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