Red Door

image borrowed from bing

Red Door

The blazing orb dove into the ocean

like a huge fiery California waterbird,

drenching the white caps on the cruel waves

that rolled merciless against miles

of white Malibu beach,

as summer dusk settled sonorous

on Santa Monica, but the teen age girls

squealing on the ferris wheel at POP

did not hear the soft footsteps in the deep sand,

did not see a solitary figure strolling

the emptiness beneath the pier,

merely a shadow within a shadow

watching the crimson and orange surf

hammer the earth, then slide back

and pound it again, leaving dirty foam bubbles

that fizzed and popped near his brogans. 

The gathering twilight approached him

as he stared out at a convoy of Naval vessels

gliding deliberately toward the horizon like gray phantoms

bristling with their precious cargo of cannon fodder.

He had escaped, had served, had seen

the mystic side of that huge expanse of flat water,

understood having mortars for breakfast,

before swishing the hungry jungle flies

from the dozen severed heads stuck firmly

on bamboo stakes, dead eyes searching

for America with their testicles crammed

in their midwestern mouthes,

lips sewn up crudely with green vines,

compounding the bright coral covering his cortex,

an inner reef that grew in his head 

like a cancerous tumor, blockading even

the Mary Jane craft that churned through

the blood canals, its denizens of demons

working hard at licking the pink pulp

off the backside of his eyeballs

as he continuously sought more fuel

to feed the cold furnace 

his heart had become, pouring

chemicals into the void, sticking

his head deep into the darkness,

chasing the black-hooded monks

who had no faces as they

wandered in the fibrous fog

captured by the impenetrable canopy

of horrid memories 

and nauseous nightmares,

because the mother fucking purple scars

of war do not fade easily,

and shrapnel does not dissolve

from hippie spittle showers,

and nothing seemed to ease

the terrible ache in his chest,

not tanned teen torsos

nor soft California nights,

not the medicine from Mexico

nor mind bending mushrooms,

but his mother’s voice chimed

clearly within the sea gulls cries,

helping him to realize

he had to come down,

had to get a grip, 

had to return to the world,

which probably brought him to this beach,

to peer through the barnacle-laden stanchions

at the old Hotel Casa del Mar, its rod iron

balconies swarming with heroin ghosts,

yet somehow not even 

Edmond O’Brien as Chuck Dederich

or Alex Cord as Zanky Albo,

or the VA counselors,

or his mother

could convince him 

that now was the time

to join the congregation

of the Church of Synanon. 

Glenn Buttkus

September 2012

Posted over on dVerse Poets OLN63

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