the Target store on Sepulveda in Manhattan Beach

the Target Store on Sepulveda in Manhattan Beach

Leaving Venice Beach

after a poetry reading

I took Lincoln Blvd. 

to Vista Del Mar,

daydreaming

as the sun set

over Dockweiler Beach, 

thinking about how

California had been 

a plane ticket and a rented car,

but now

in my mind

is where you’ll always be.

The difference between working 

towards something 

and waiting

might be recalling

what it’s like to start again,

does your church 

deem it a sin to begin 

when tomorrow looks like today

and yesterday is as lost as 

living in LA?

Life is like 

being written into someone else’s script,

Act I

is a freeway for days,

Act II 

is learning to pay your dues,

and Act III

is approaching your exit,

but seeing it’s closed 

for construction.

It takes only a small amount of time

to realize that choices

are as uniform as this Target Store,

one parking lot looks like another,

home is where the keyboard is,

but on Sepulveda in Manhattan Beach

my iPhone notifies me of a memory.

There’s something about

living in a city

with a certain anonymity

that is both romantic

and completely paralyzing;

I mean it’s like I could disappear

and become anything,

but then that means that everything

is my responsibility. 

Through the automatic doors

and into the store

one hundred and one housewife’s pass me by,

a kid in a stroller,

and another in the cart,

a comprising young boy

standing at a towering three feet tall

looks me in the eye long enough

that I’ve got to do something,

a punch in the gut

or a high five,

to the latter 

he responds with a closed fist,

his knuckles to my palm and says,

“Peacock.”

Oh god, kids.

The fact is

they’re our future

and if you’re not going about building it

then it’s your duty

to start having them

so that somebody

can start it.

Five boxes of breakfast bars,

a six-pack of beer,

and some cleaning wipes,

our shopping cart 

could have held anything,

but we couldn’t make the decision

about who would be pushing it.

“One million, 

three-hundred and fifty-seven thousand,

six-hundred and ninety-nine,

and seventy-five cents,” said the clerk at the register.

“Wow,” I responded.

“That seems kind of expensive.”

She shrugged her shoulders, “Taxes?”

I took my card out of my wallet,

but stopped myself as she touched it.

“Wait,” I said. “I’ve got a gift card for this.”