OCEAN VIEW (STRIP MALL)

but together we are alone in the magnificent house
by the ruined strip mall, and it could
always be a beach

with drunks from the cajun bar
mexicans from the latin grocery
and fitness nuts from the extreme gym

all swarming around the
bank and the wendy's
to get in or out, or rolling
past the faded auto repair
and gas station, some

kind of pentecostal church
with glass doors which used
to be a bbq rib place

there's a locksmith
next to a cellphone shop
and a hairdresser's

cops sit sipping coffee
in their cruisers across the street
at 7-11
or at the indian mini-mart
where i shop
buying weekly parcels
from brown polite gentlemen

the cops sit sipping coffee
eyeing frail negro girls fingering
the redbox screen, navigating
with their index fingers

and children trundle down
from the far hillside
from the complicated
installation of apartment sprawl
down to the tire shop
like a francis bacon painting
smears of brown in a twisted
knot of black rubber
and sun-bleached logos
and greasy unending tools

up the road are some schools
i suppose, a library who knows
we've played tennis in most
of the public courts around here

but together we are alone in the magnificent house 
and on the back porch we've planted patchouli
and bayleaf and 5 kinds of thyme and rosemary
and have bamboo squirting up from horse troughs
the color of conduit

and our same concrete venus modeled
after botticelli's, and afro-like jade succulents
and fennel and oregano and tomatoes

and 3 yucca's
engulfed by weeds
like all our needs
the sleep of saying it
rebounding
to the neighborhood
streets

where we walk together
hand in hand
reaching out to grasp
the smooth sinew
of the skin of the crape myrtle
and locusts have yet to sing
only the songbirds
only the supercell tyrants
in their battleships of black wind

how will it end
in the throat of the mockingbird
when grumbling garbage trucks
go out of heaven
into alleys infested with
green chinese peanut butter trees

i have offended poseidon
by making love to my wife
in full view

of the image cult