At this drunken shoreline, patterns return, in
quilted quiet. I can revel again in spiced hours,
deaf to the biker-ghosts, bad-mouthing
this demure, paper posture.
Thoughts are a little rumpled, like the sea,
what with these ferocious memories; un-manacled,
like cottonwood dreams, blown out into the world.
This world I am watching.
* * * * *
She walks down the street, locking
every wandering glance; stolen stares from
other hungers. Sad limbs, built for laughing strolls,
carry instead their weight in
desperation, the roll call gestures of
fragmentary magnetism. To look down is to invalidate,
the one thing that renders such creatures immobilized.
She never looks straight on. Being seen but
unknown has honed a peripheral awareness
to a hawk-like precision. It’s the hollow
look of the lonely.
* * * * *
That’s a tiny dog for such an imposing guy.
It must have something to do with an ill-
fitting black t-shirt. I still love AC/DC, too. But
the designer sunglasses match the grey goatee and flip
flops well enough to doubt the bravado, question
the impartial coarseness; his language just color-
ful enough to hide the deeper grey.
The fear of more.
* * * * *
Her weighty eyes climb his rusting frame; a gaze
made full in the weight of familiarity. His jaw-
line, thin, like his tired neck, perches on
shoulders, stooped, but unburdened by
neat and tidy, pressed, quick, or stoic. Endless pages
pass between their easiness, two souls in single,
unflinching presence. He remembers less
than the love she feels, spoken through his
wrinkled palm in hers, their fingers entwined.
The tapestry of their years.
* * * * *
The penny arcade discoveries of wide-mouthed boys –
more magic through a cheap telescope than my pretense of self-
imposed juxtapositions. Their cocky, self-
assured swagger breathes the new air, heedless of my
artless anxiety in their art of care-less play. Can voices
really be that loud? So much more gets spoken in
the repetitions of unpracticed
wisdom. Their code is a skateboard sculpture. Life
on a flat, four-wheeled universe. Soon,
when fearful complexities begin to gnaw
through the ropes that tether youth to
moments and days, will they remember
this foolish display of seaside
time, gloriously wasted?
* * * * *
This guy has no story to tell. At least
that’s what is suggested in the gymnastic
dodging of eyes and steps from
that hand. Oh, that hand, weary, upturned for
that drop of grace found in spare quarters, lost
among our Visa receipts. Well-rehearsed
well-wishing will never match the possibility of just
one good conversation. His stench, reminder of loss,
friendship’s nemesis, gift of forgottenness,
taunts him. It’s one more reason to avoid him.
He owns nothing.
Well, except a checker board. But, that’s designed
for company.
* * * * *
A tide and a thousand waves later, a laptop
overheats my knees. It reads 17%, the same possibility
I’ll remember their faces by the weekend. I am
like them – just another stigma.
Or, maybe another story waiting to be written.
Unwritten.
Rewritten.
Here at the corner of
validation and forgot.
Rob's Lit-Bits 
