Star
Dot Cafe
Beach life starts out lotion down the slant of the back,
and slides into hot pants going beyond to the trance,
the heart of a story lurking in the tide of folks to come.
New faces in the juke jive fuse with the missing,
coarse, ill-tempered, back from bad nights and hangovers.
The same love, out for itself, survives the crusty scene,
a mosh with teen divorcées, high on live brass and tungsten
feet multiplied on frozen statues, babes losing it,
misters and mistresses caught wild in freeze frame.
Up front, they want to pat it down, disarm it as it enters.
Spot the one who’s always at fault, or does something,
forcing his way, pushing a vague problem onto the floor,
one lone figure clueless for a mate, his motives throbbing.
Bouncers watch him, wait for his heart-skip assault.
They eye another face, that slim girl in blue strobe reality.
All man underneath, but she can make herself be anyone.
And there’s an all-too-quiet God T-shirt guy.
Look at his stuffed olive eyes, and sketchy beard,
he could spaz, stalking too many pale horses.
Tragedy and trivia, a space junk swirl,
it’s a pizza top world falling together, somehow.
It reminds me of you, your glowing edge,
a razor in the war against a boring travesty.
Tinted glass disguises what you feel,
no clue what might be strange in the air.
You found me hanging at the back of my life
and worked your way forward, stirring, unrelenting,
sweeping over me like a lighthouse far in the night,
searching the crowd all the way to the bandstand.
