Postcard

I fill the air with shots of birds—
But what happens afterwards?

When my glory in reverse
Is reduced to scribbled verse?

The post ex facto of the view,
When both my faces rendezvous?

My shiny suit of cardboard airing
Its gangster double-breasted pairing?

A thousand-words-worth shot
And a flipside text that’s not?

Janusian, I have two sides—
One for Jekylls, one for Hydes:

My presiding household numens
Protecting sweaty traveling humans

With glossy pictures of Cape Cod
To suggest their inner tourist god

(Though to the people that I write
I seem an irritating, godless sight,

Flying as I do the double faces
Of friends who write from better places,

Filled with warmth and bonhomie
For uninvited guests to see),

But, though I have the feel and weight
Of a solitary sheet of hate,

Like Möbius’s surface I combine
Two worlds in a single line—

So to really find my track
You have to circumnavigate the back,

Parse my verbs, and really dote
To explain that useless boat

Which has wandered into sight
As a maritime excuse to write,

A suddenly loquacious oracle
Sprung unbidden from a coracle,

Sentiments invited without warning
By a complementary seaside morning,

A picture of a stranger boating
Provoking flights of long-range gloating:

As angelic faces sometimes pair
With a suspect derrière,

A self-portrait that inside
Is with its evil twin allied,

An oxymoron ill begun
With orange trees and dipping sun,

On whose reverse a tourist tries
To square his vision with the skies,

An image of a perfect climate
Somehow managing to slime it,

The seven worldly wonders massacred
In the name of sending word,

So much nonsense rising from
Ripostes we post ad nauseam,

But still, I put all this behind me
To oblige the idiot who signed me.

Kailua
June 19th and 20th, 2004

Lanikai
September 22nd and 24th, 2008