Carlos

I marinated poulet grillé and chilled the Chablis
for when the swimmers, blushed with North Beach tans,
and full of news I would attend to and forget,
while refilling glasses, theirs and mine out there,
and my other larger glass in the kitchen cupboard,
came back and tracked wet sand onto the carpets.
Carpetbaggers!  Years I’d lost returned
and irrigated pen scars in my mind’s notebooks
making script legible and letting them reoccupy
the lobes my life work pickled and titillated
with other people’s books and brawls and worlds.