The Pacific
If you pass them you curse them
‘cause you can knock them into a mountain, or off a cliff. Bikes
always wind around the canyon, sure, but equipped. Slim speeders decked.
Now — these kids, what, ten and eight on BMXs, rust shaking off their chains,
standing on chipped pedals. Sharp juts of boy body — side to side to side.
No water. No helmet. No money. It’s June. Never money. They’re on their way
away from some tinderbox corner of their city called The Valley,
from some rough kids with rocks down in The Valley, at the Zody’s parking lot.
“Get ‘em!” still echoes off their sweat soaked bones.
“C’mon!” Ricky had shouted at the bottom of Old Topanga Canyon Road
and now, ten miles on, near Wildwood, Joey’s handlebars pop off.
He kicks out a foot near the traffic stream, twists in the metal, then they pump,
and pump west, burn daylight, burn the snaking pavement. Till—what a wonder
after that last crest, what blue! The sun blazing an inch over blue
foaming surf. They’ve never seen these waves, though their valley is so close
to this pacific.
“Let’s go,” Joey says after a minute, turning from the crush, and aiming his frame
back down the darkening canyon. I want to say they pause to breathe in the sea,
‘cause even lost boys go home,
but I don’t know if they have time to breathe.
* * * * *
Desperado
I heard they dumped 96 million black shade balls
into some Los Angeles reservoirs
where Joey and I fainted our first summer back
in Cali. We didn’t know we had to drink water.
We didn’t know we didn’t know
every thirst. I was a stupid kid. I thought I knew
the desperado in Desperado. Desperado
is a driving song. You keep water jugs in the trunk
so the song doesn’t stop when the Chevy overheats
on an ocean bound road
in July. It was the song
on the Santa Monica carousel when I looked for a daddy
on that spinning pier. A pier is like a hand
reaching out to sea. And, I once sang Desperado at a camp
and watched people cringe
when my smooth speaking voice didn’t translate.
They sucked their teeth on the other side of the fire.
Fuck you, I thought, I need this song.
All the truth I need to know about my dad is in this song.
The Queen of Spades told me so when I was seven.
(Yes, I drank that Kool-Aid
like a shade ball soaking up sun.)
And now, for the sixth time in my life, I sit across from him—
I inhale an egg-white omelet. I drink glass after glass,
which is doing nothing.
Watch him eat a burger with a knife and fork.
Watch him cast about at an art deco pattern behind me,
say, “It’s like planets!” It’s like feeling every feeling at once—
my trying not to talk about anything important,
my thinking I’m alone ‘cause Joey isn’t here, he’s never
here. Fuck you,
I remember thinking, I want you happy campers to feel me.
I must have sounded desperate. Dry mouthed, on stage.
Unloved. I love my dad but he can’t love me, no matter
how much I let him. I love
to sing in the shower, like all who are lucky
to have one and no voice. As if the pooling water in my throat,
the pooling water at my feet, and my desperate
arrhythmic stylings
are the thirst quenching pacific
of the Pacific.