Waterproof Beach Poem by John Courtney

In eyes I'll travel
against summer music
scaffolds of Rimbaud
hitchhiking backwards
picked up disguised
muttering dirty thumb
bomb in the breaking breeze
and to not destroy
and to chase myself

And where bones keep flesh
when smiles destroy
as the smoke crutches
mixing the skies
of an antique health
and in that belly
a hole in my lawn
where they stole a tree
to a dripping wanderer

He will be brave
and in clanking glass
hold a door for God
to feed the bottom
and sleep where
mountains still grow
over the counters
where I lazily trace
a drowning Thanksgiving
from a castle of tears
on American ladders

The sun tomorrow
is being wide open
but I throw my heads
to a carving cloud
and fill my bucket with sand
and call older voices
to the highway kitchen

Strangers will follow
cowards like us
through stained reflection
and I stood for a hole in my lawn
and I touched a finger to a business card
where a great father once wrote his name
on my sunvisor yesterday

I am always young
and pour a worthy life and shaking dream
from a crowded bucket
and I hear my ocean always steal
breaking the wheels of rocks
and we watch for millions
and to just be good
and to not regret
when we turn to face
a smiling mother
and learn to do the same.

And they feed firecrackers
to my seagulls.