On the Beachchair         

THIS BEING here and outside of all walls they build        
I sit      with water in front and stereophonic

and remember soft arm locks of men
who are now just names on a pad or stone.

I sit     in my old house on a new chair

Reset past the halfway mark of an ideal lifespan.

In a little brick shell with me inside, I dream that's who I always was:

a hermit crab-feast with wooden mallets and Old Bay seasoning

drenched in beer and moonlight.

I sit      and recall world-changing desires    
and now just the thought of fried chicken is enough.

Have I grown small?

While meanwhile time that thumb-sucker
keeps the drainpipes open

and I know there's only so much

container left to pour this life-stuff into. And the pipedream drains.

Do I need a plumber?

I sit      reading a story I wrote     to a small crowd of ear-pairs
that dissolve into single guffaws and yell at me to get it published,
you've got to get it out there. But nobody offers an outlet agent
or angel.

I sit      with the inside and the outside lodged in temporary truce

On a wish you were all here postcard,

wish-dreaming the world to peace

as it was in the world I built from my brother's Lincoln logs he got 'cause he's a boy.

while crinoline highways slammed the door to my upstairs split-level room

and I crouched away from tornados they said were discussions.

I sit       and hug myself in absencia because   -- as my Aunt Gold said all mad and sad at the end of her: Where the hell have YOU been for 30 years?

I sit       and stir to move my tired tailbone to another story       and slightly off the dime

I sit     while the waves dribble little shore-kisses on somebody's beachglass crystalware.

Here outside of all the walls they think they build          I sit          

And then I get up and go eat.