For Santa Monica

The thought of you enough to keep
this lazy eye
open at night. Extinguished hopes.
Juvenile reassurance of what might have been if
I were yours.

From the front porch that uncurls
like a tongue out to the street
I take in whitewalled garages
the wide boulevard
winding its way
between sidewalk casings
to the place where the world is blurred
by the heat rising from the concrete
and the houses become blemishes
a stucco gridwork on the steppe
and far off the dry sagebrush swirls up to meet the sky
a pure cyan that makes it easy to forget
the colossus of life that has been poured into this dead land.

You haunt my waking hours
appetizing boredom
sterility
punk rock seeping into my every pore.
Your image has become so delicate
I have to fall asleep before
I remember I've never been to Santa Monica.