Straight Life

―That’s not the story your partner told us.
―Oh, was that the one about the hooker with dysentery?

The hidden faces of the Maya
the kindness of strangers
              & some kind of poetic mercenary take
                                                like did you say “Rambo”
                              or “Rimbaud”?
I was replaying Apocalypse Now in my head
              Bill Kilgore, a goofy foot
“What do you know about surfing, soldier,
you’re from goddamn New Jersey”
                              as is Jim Thomas of The Mermen
but surf music is
Dock Boggs & Lou Reed
as well as the secret soundtrack to The Fall of America
by Allen Ginsberg
minus the beach at Golgotha
from a distance stained by my poetry
              but then Ginsberg liked my poems
                                                he told me so
                              was he just being kind?
That was years ago, I was a different person
              I did the hula in my sleep
listening to Psycho Killer
                              & dreaming about tsunamis
              The dreams are the same but
now I do a surf ghetto watusi
                              & Art Pepper plays Straight Life