BLACK OCEAN

I have come thousands of miles to stand

on the edge of America,

the end of America

where the route 66 silently crumbles into the ocean

where fishermen curse as their lines tangle

a buoy blinks,

on the wooden boards a fish lies dead in a bucket

his eyes like black beads reflect

the lights that try to confront the abyss,

the Santa Monica ferris wheel illuminates the pier

it shines and dazzles with colors,

a giant eye, wide open

that sees only oblivion.

And there are those eyes who praise the sun in the day

and wonder when it'll come back

to stop the ten-hour decay,

they look at the wheel and its solar ways

but know it's only artificial,

a consolation in the night

The black ocean's filled with godlessness,

with the reason we write and read

hate and tattoo our skins

with the realization that life is only business,

the true believer's failed races

he who looks at love like devotees at krishna,

he who waits knowing the only thing that'll come is the end

but still eats the fruits of youth,

he who also ripens in the heat on the passenger's seat

stuck in traffic or on a beach bench, alone,

he who ripens and rots, is planted and born again,

who drinks wine, the blood of grapes, not of Christ

until his teeth are crimson and his smile indelible,

he who runs among derelict lives but contemplates,

he who passes the bums' bodies on the sand

like fossils on the black ocean's floor,

he who has buried Hilton's adorers with their stacks of bills

and tequila shots, cocaine lines and death on the rocks,

he who has heeded the irresistible call of the night

but knows that tomorrow, when the sun'll rise

the high school kids of America

will still fight their reflexions under the pier

throwing their white bodies in the sand, burned by the sun

and adorned by skulls

Malibu girls'll walk the sidewalks like the blond ghosts

of an endless time,

the angel-faced teenagers baptized by the pollution in the Pacific Ocean

where float the stanzas i try to find,

the beat birds, the infinite possibilities of words

__and my depression in the summer doldrums.

TRAIN OF THOUGHTS

Somewhere south of Paris
a man with a beer belly
waves at the train,
his loose dog skips on the path,
he holds the brown leather leash with his other hand.
The train follows a canal for a little while,
a straight trench, man-dug at eye level
filled with quiet water that looks like jello,
flat and smooth.

Now it's summer
but it probably makes great ice to skate
in the winter,
my father used to tell me about how he played
on the canal close to our place when he was a kid.

I pay attention to the rattle of the train for an instant
as i put down a magazine
_____Tackatack-tacktack-tacktack...
the only music i hear,
the bass line to the music in head,
that and the air conditionning
that i muffled with my sweater.

Golden haystacks in the fields through the left window,
rolls that stick to the hills.
Truck parts in a yard through the right one
and the bare tracks that keep stretching
and sometimes distort in a turn
although firmly bolted to the ground.

The sun gently sets on France's countryside.
This is my soil that i'm gliding through,
but i feel nostalgia for America's water towers
absent from this moving picture,
that's going to reel for one more hour.
The sun has nothing to hit on its course.
I'm killing time with a four-color pen
throwing useless words on a dogeared train ticket.

The sunflowers are lined up like hopeful brothers,
I am alone in an eight seat compartment.