Saturday, June 23, 2012

A Poem by Joe Amaral

Echoes of Broken Shells
 
My restlessness is a leaf
on a windblown branch
barely hanging on for life
 
I flutter aground
Stare into the cotton strewn
mist over damp sand blocking
 
the sea. On a park bench
zoned out sits a middle aged
pedophile-looking man. I do
 
not wish to end up like him
Idle, aimlessly glazed on the
Pacific ocean waves with his
 
paunch, long coat, dark shades
Likely heading for the public
restroom to masturbate furiously
 
to some lost form of female
conquest in his departed past. I
am not he, but we are both alone
 
Feet unconsciously seek out
quicksand, find none, just a
suckling echo as sand dollars
 
vomit ashore, their perfectly etched
symbols exuding an old fashioned
world now only heard in dead conches
 
I wander by inlanders with their blue
jeans rolled up, running away from
the ruinous tide when it kisses their
 
chubby ankles as if it was some
predator about to rip them apart
The old ladies and their small dogs,
 
the diseased handicap placard army
And the cameras and the poses and the
screaming kids with their pails and shovels
 
I am not like anybody
 
They are human reality
There is a hero in this story but
he tragically dies in the end
 
I remain
 
Joe Amaral is a paramedic who spends most his time spelunking around the California central coast, though he is an OG raised in the San Francisco East Bay Area. His poetry and short stories have appeared in many literary journals and print anthologies, including A Handful of Dust, amphibi.us, Carcinogenic Poetry, Certain Circuits, Diverse Voices Quarterly, Eclectic Flash, RED OCHRE LiT, and Underground Voices. He also has pieces published internationally via Decanto Magazine, DIOGEN, Litro, and Taj Mahal Review.

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