Partisan Musth

They trumpet and rage and gnash their teeth, 
and wildly thrash their trunks,

these once peaceable behemoths, 
now busy hurling their bulks about 
like wrecking balls crashing through the tent pole forests,

threatening to pull the big top down with their tusks. 
In the past, mad pachyderms were shot at once,

decreed too dangerous to perform their tasks.

But now we cower before these fake Ganeshas 
who tower over us. We are afraid of being trod upon; 
we, their mousy steeds, their Mooshikas,

who have carried them this far, only to be crushed

in a fit of pique incomprehensible

to creatures more emotionally stable, more sensible.

We should consider doing what they do in India,

where elephants are still considered useful,

and tie them up and let them starve 
for several days until the fever passes.

Next election, consider risking the kicks 
and stand behind the asses.

Rod McKuen

With the sound of rustling paper, 
the waves curl into ever tighter scrolls.
It’s a good thing I don’t live by the sea;

I’d no doubt become one of those

beachcomber poets,

writing paeans to harbor seals and lighthouses,
pondering the twisted mysteries of driftwood

and the teeming wonder of tide pools,
the ocean’s incessant hiss pulverizing my words
into a flat expanse of bland, featureless glass.
No, I only visit the ocean every couple of years,

and only for a day or two, just long enough
for the novelty to wear off, long enough
to let the wind ruffle my hair and scour

my lungs with salt, just long enough

to be grateful to live somewhere shady and quiet,

somewhere that doesn’t stink of fish.

Cobble Beach

On a tip from the waitress at the cute little

fancier-than-we’re used-to restaurant on the bay,

when we’re done eating the cheapest thing on the menu

and watching the trawlers chug out to sea, my mother and I

speed out to Yaquina Head, eager to see the tide pools

and the things that might be creeping about in their depths. 

A guard booth stands beside the winding road 
that leads to the beach, but this late in the day
no one is stationed there. A sign states 
that the entrance fee to the park should be placed 
in an envelope and slipped through a slit

in the door:“We operate on the honor system.”

My usually honest mother shocks me 
by gunning the engine

and zooming through without paying.
 
We park beside the lighthouse that stands

silhouetted against the setting sun

like the picture on the cover of some

religious tract or self-help tome.

The air is golden but a burning-cold wind runs its nails

through the Queen Anne’s lace bowing just beyond the guardrails.
The panoramic view of the cove is postcard-perfect.

We tramp down a steep flight of wooden stairs

to the base of the cliffs where a curly-haired college girl

huddles with a paperback, poorly paid to keep watch 
over the pools of  invertebrates exposed 
by the retreating  tide.
The rocks are round and smooth as Spaldeens,
heavy and black and knocking loose beneath our feet.

We slide carefully down to the water’s hem,

the high crags behind us shielding us from the lashing wind.
Yellow plastic signs mark the boundaries beyond which
you’re not permitted to venture.
 
Rocky outcroppings jut from the water just off shore,

clusters of boulders whitewashed with gull droppings,

constantly massaged by the waves’ gentle lapping.

My mother points to one of these tiny islands and says

she thinks she sees a bunch of white seals out there.

I laugh at her, prepare to mock her failing eyesight, 
then realize she’s right; lounging about on the rocks

are a dozen or so seals, whiter than soap or bleached bone,

white as roly-poly little ghosts.

They are too far out. I want them to swim to shore,

want to be able to stand a few steps away from them,

want an encore of the performance at the bird enclosure

at the aquarium earlier that day,

where a common murre waddled right up to me,

cocked its head and looked as if to pierce my shoe 
with its sharp, black beak 

before turning around and diving into the pool,

where it swooped for a long, long time beneath the surface  

like an aquatic bat snapping up sardines.

I don’t need to touch these creatures,

but I feel a strange need to be noticed by them,

as if I don’t fully exist until seen by some wild beast.

My mother’s concern, however well-intentioned,

is not enough, nor smiles from pretty strangers

clutching paperbacks. No, I want that connection

to some animal, something alive but non-human,

something aside from the pulpy lime-green anemones

and purple starfish clinging desperately

to the rocks at my feet. I want to be

acknowledged by these plump Buddhas,

white as ivory, with black eyes and noses,

lounging contentedly on their island,

still as statues as they bask

in the golden glow of enlightenment.

I want them to bestow upon me their blessing.

But we are too far away for them to pay us any mind.

And so, after spying on them for a time,

distant worshipers, we grow bored,

and when the girl tramps out to collect the yellow signs

and chase away the few human stragglers

we clomp up the steps (where signs admonish us

not to take home any cobbles)

and shiver, exposed once more to the cutting wind,

then drive back to the warm motel room,

from the window of which

we can just barely catch,

burning red with the sunset,

a glimpse, a tiny sliver, of the sea.

Pinch Hitter

A kid in a faded Spider-man t-shirt

catches flies popped
by his wiffle-bat wielding father
in the middle of a balding field
behind the muffler repair place.
A robot of welded-together car parts
stands sentinel on the roof, 
tailpipe arm frozen mid-wave.
One warm night the boy and his friends 
scaled the dumpster behind the building 
and from there scrambled onto the roof

(its tarpaper littered with lost Spaldeens and frisbees),

where they proceeded to drape a jacket

and a baseball hat on the robot.

It's still thus adorned, a scarecrow 
overlooking the street. The mechanics 
find it amusing, not least because the boss doesn't,

keeps telling them to climb on up there

and strip it back down to a metal skeleton.

The boy smiles whenever he happens to glance at it,

silhouetted against the late afternoon sun.

His father doesn't notice it at all, lost

in a swirl of grim static emanating from somewhere else.

The only thing connecting the man and the boy
is the trajectory of the ball, an invisible arc

traced through the blinding summer sunlight.
The father doesn't talk, just keeps thwocking
those hollow balls into orbit. 

Thrusting up his glove, the boy makes a tiny, idle wish.

Later that evening, the cicadas' song is interrupted

by a clanking and scraping, as something pulls itself loose

and runs across the field, skirting the ditch full of tires

and spiderwebbed windshields at its far end.

The next morning the boy inadvertently sleeps in,

accustomed to being barked awake and bullied

into his clothes. The house does not smell

like coffee. He creeps

down the carpeted hall to his father's room, stopping

and standing very, very still

when he sees the puddle of rust seeping

from under the door.

An Anchovy

I stare through the curved, distorted glass

at the shark shadows thrown against 
the back wall of the tank, cast by 
dozens of the beasts swimming past

clusters of fake sunbeams that cut through the water 
from above, dancing like disco lights.

The shadows leap and flicker as if caught in a strobe.

The striped skin of the sharks glows

with an unearthly aura as they slip through the water

like ghosts floating soundlessly through a nightmare.

In the next tank over are the anchovies,

separated from their predatory brethren

by a single thin wall.

These pop-eyed critters gulp constantly,

each mouth’s wide wedge opening

and closing as they swim,

the foil-coated hinges of their jaws crinkling.

Each fish is little more than a mouth

dragging a blade behind it.

These silvery pizza-toppings terrify me

more than the sharks, which are at least elegant

rather than cartoonish.

The sharks may have to keep swimming to live,

but at least they take a break from eating, unlike these creatures

who are incessantly consuming. Do they even sleep?

It seems insane to be so ceaselessly tenacious.

Perhaps they remind me too much of myself;
my eyes bugging open, searching wildly

for what, any kind of usable material, desperate to keep

on creating. I may be more aware than these little creatures,

but am I any less voracious?

I wear myself out with my constant pushing.

I need to learn to relax, need to find a new role model.

I should be more like the jellyfish,

gently floating along like pulsing organs,

like parts of some larger, more complex creature

rather than things complete in themselves.

Certainly not things that have survived

for millions of years despite being not much more

than translucent bags of cells,

trailing threads and filled perhaps

with a few light-bulb filaments, or else oozing

huge ruffled clouds of tissue

that grow and contract, sucked into and squeezed from

that soft, pulsing bell.

Clappers of smoke, held together by almost nothing:

a splash of pigment, a membrane so thin

its shape can only be retained

by the water it is suspended in.

I could watch them for hours.

The sharks fill me with awe, the anchovies make me anxious,

but these drifting balloons, these lava lamp blobs

make me feel like I am floating with them,

make me lose my own form,

force be to become defined by the void 
around my self.

The Chill Wind from the Sea

A child's faint footprints
leap across the sand
toward the rocks, then
skitter away, leaving
a few scattered handfuls
of torn starfish arms
lying in the clear, still water
of the tide pool.

Haboob

Scoffing at the approaching downburst,
we parked behind a scuttled Texaco station
on the outskirts of Ahwautukee and shut off the engine.
Fumbling to undo the clasp to let drop
those twin, heavy sandbags
of your breasts, my fingers slipped
and I cracked the crystal face
of my wristwatch on the dash.
I nibbled your neck and ankles as
the sudden flurry of dust scoured the windshield.
Your howls rose up to try to imitate
-or intimidate- the gales for a while,
though they never backed down
and you were soon spent, the sheepskin seat covers
squishing with sweat. We remained glued together
for the duration of the dry and chilly night, the drifts
finally rising up to lean their gritty heads
halfway up the windows, as if the entire world around us
was one giant hourglass,
stilled to signify that it was morning
and our time was up, even if we were not yet
fully buried.