Event Horizon On The Curve Of The Bay

Me and my old friend, Pete,
stalk the ruby specter of our youth,
a chase to an event horizon,
like the sun
that floats in a final bloat before the dip
into the clipped line of a stainless-steel ocean.

The salty mist rising from the soft surf,
stings the eyes,
our excuse for tears
even here in the foothills of this city,
this closet door left ajar
on the glitzy curve of the Pacific bay.

Manicured blocks and streetlights begin at the end
of asphalt furrows
burrowed in brows of granite faces,
snug under caps of grey flannel snow
with smeared hues,
like rouge on cheeks of old drag queens,
flaming against a sapphire sky.

And we,
boy toys of evolution,
stopped our play
to drop from branches of sequestered lives
petrified by millennia,
skipping from bars and clubs
hidden in the shaded yawns of villages,
caves once lit by fire.

Life’s fingers,
sticky with sweet regrets,
clutch at a world where nothing matters
except memories ingrained in color or black and whites,
when the flatten trail,
the Roman cement,
the red and black Kentucky dirt,
and the double ruts of prairie schooners
covered by strips of super highways,
carry us,
just two old men,
through to the final tread of bare old soles
worn from hiding where our steps have been,

pass our last stonewall,

a fragile plywood arm of dissent
dropped across our path,
like some last act of caution,
painted in yellow strips of bias

which drips from the brush of narrow minds.



Akeith Walters 2009