On the fence

 

10 November 2021

Oh sunflower past

Prime, oh lawn mowers and saws

Seers’ vacations

At cemetery

Below Koolau’s hard scarves

Sun paints, clouds erase

I saw William Blake

Beside the pitch, peering in

Smooshed aluminum

On road looks like coal

Sangha says, or metal lace

The virgin blesses

A plastic bottle

Plastic lei, not yet shipped off

On barge, to elsewhere

I take my photo

In a Little Tykes mirror

Left beside the road

I am nose below

Pink buttoned eyebrow

Cyclops as bulk trash

No pick up without

Phone call to junk purveyor

Else mirror sit like

Abandoned Buick

Sheaf of moldy tickets on

Green windshield   I am

Walking away from

The day’s subpoenas, tears

For young man’s self re-

gard on stand, he killed,

Hallucinating self-de-

Fence: sitters ideal

Man in woman’s dress

Leans on fence in Joe’s

Kitchen or woman

In man’s dress, only

The glasses remain fixed on

Hidden fridge, hidden

Cutlery, a lamp

That charges phones, window slit

Offers mountain view

On Cleghorn Street, an

Abandoned black couch spits out

White foam   stranded wave

A gay man heckles

Two blond men walking by, “Hold

Hands!” he demands but

They meander down

Kuhio toward marketplace

Where Joe buys shampoo

For dog, tourists pose

By lit ALOHA next to

Banyans that aim at

Skyscrapers through hole

In roof, wishing to be trees

Heading north to cold

Sun birds flying out

Pitch your tent in cold corner

Watch Waikiki flood

The old paintings come

Back to currency, marshes

Where the malls had been

Egret follows lawn

Mower stink, trans-animal

Dreaming of its gears.

 

--for Joe and Anderson O'Mealy