Boardwalk Parade
In eager darkness
past affronted trees
with moon-shook leaves
that ask for averted eyes
from our hunger and our sighs.
We wandered to the boardwalk
and on to the night’s feathered lap.
Longnosed Maria
offered to guess my weight
while her boyfriend sold pot
on the beach from a plate.
The roller coaster
at seaside amusement park
was too small and slow
the rides we craved
were with girls from Ohio
who raised their arms and waved.
Old man Themides sold burgers
at three times the price
that they could be had
just two blocks away.
From the hoarse surf
and on Artic Avenue
comfort could be caught
before it fled the boulevard
where Ice cream was bought
Spanish sailors , no older than us
drank and wore hats
at arrogant angles.
Their white uniforms
glinted green and red
from fiberglas horses
frozen in never ending surprise
plunging on profane poles
with their dead smiling eyes.
Zac Coopshion ran the giftshop
with mushroomed orbs
seeing centaurs
while selling t-shirts
To lurking steel workers
lurching housewives
preening boy wonders and
seafood stuffers with hives.
We jumped hotel walls
and raced lifeguard after lifeguard
through stolen pools of joy
laughing at Cleveland’s factory sisters
in ill fitting bikinis
skin of matte crimson and cream
ready to bloom into blisters
on the arm of a marine.
Jehovah’s witnesses
handed out comics
to the stoned, the hopeless, the hapless
the careless and the bored
who promptly howled in the windows
of the “Ocean’s treasure Inn”
at the gulf station owner
who had saved all year
to take his wife to a dinner
of crabcakes and beer.
If Edgar Cayce knew
how the corner hanging mystics
and the street progressed pilgrims
begged for almonds
from his hand
he wasn’t saying
while in pink robes and tennis shoes
the Krishna boys were dancing
and praying.
The jut -jawed Gypsy
who ran the ferris wheel
was busy
trying to revive the dead passions
of fourteen with a bouncing bored cigarette
punctuating sneering syllables
of charmless burble
to the straw haired dyes
of the young girls
eating french fries.
The vaudeville that played every
summer night on the beach
was free for the soul starved
who were too tired to eat.
It was recompense
for November’s cold stew
when a three block trip for pizza
was the best we could do.
Joshua Kight 5/17/07