Santa Monica
you and me in my humvee
got pulled over in the desert
i got busted down that rank, lost the stripe
got sentenced to a month as a talking water jug
we took the highway out of the rear-view mirror
down the ten, the cajon, the dirty valley, the backboned boulders
us tricky-parking in the city of angels
we got us a hostelry
santa monica next to a gun show
i’m sure we went out and ate something, then
woke up in white sheets where i
wrapped in sheets and not around you
me wrong-way facing.
so you married the right guy
and the sun coming in the room and the sheets all white and you all gold, all brown
and the air so thin
and the room so big
and the yawn so empty
i’m sure we must’ve gone out for breakfast, and
walked the pier i just don’t remember
and
whose car was that?
I-ten?
My truck?
No, you rent.
and what was santa monica?
what else was there?
what did we do?
where did we go?
how was it you went home?
to your real property at the lakefront
where they have concerts and summertime shows and dogs and geese and lost earrings
how was it those white sheets in the santa monica?
i just didn’t get it
how was it the mountaintop?
you glisten in the dry, and
i just didn’t get it
“bones are the easy part”
where the air dry
that mountain over there
all.
all is gone
sometimes mountains for now you might ask
“i wonder where he is”
he still in white
in crisp white sheets
down by the beach
in the city near the beach, having come in from desert dry and highway long and
day’s end without a or place to sleep
and we mustv gone
after that gun show
to my sidewalk cafe,
to the books,
to the beach,
to the bums
to marilyn monroe who
got her hair cut there,
to the left of the spanish church only spanish sung
the sheet music strewn about
the hymns on her seat
and she kept her distance
her beach house box