Not just another dead word from a
   book
But a magical word...straight out of
   childhood
Gathered from a fascination with
   looking at maps and Atlas books
And globes of the World
All the different countries in all their
   different colors
With all their fantastic sounding
   names
All spread out in wonderful greens pinks and oranges, yellows reds and
   purples
And then... that wonderful blue sweep
   of the Pacific...the Pacific ocean.

Through the eyes of a young small
   child
The wondrous...sweet Blue Pacific
   ocean
So vast and so full of romance
With its mermaids, its whales and its
   dolphins
Coconuts and palm trees and
   treasured islands
Its flying fish and grizzled pirates,
Its blue skies forever smiling
   overhead
The surf rolling up onto its sun kissed
   beaches.

.....There long ago I glimpsed the lovely
   blue of her blouse
And the wonderful patterns on it
As she lifted me up and spun me
   around
Just like being up on the swing boats,
And she laughed with her laughing
   smiling face
And her laughing smiling eyes
And I laughed too, out loud and
   unashamed
This was how it should always be
And I didn't want it to end
Wanted it to go on forever,
It brought me a Bluey Bliss
And suddenly all this world it was a
   magic place.

She was like Life or Love itself
Wanting to embrace you and kiss you
And sweep you off your feet
Life, it held so much promise and
   beauty
So much wonder and mystery
Yea! all was magic in those Summer
   months
The coloured pictures in our comic
   books
The kicking football on the lovely
   green lawns,
The fluttering and flapping of the
   clothes on the clothes line
Were like the sails of a Great Ship...
Sweet dreams and sunbeams as we
   ran out to meet the tide.

And still she calls to me today, wild
   blue ocean
How I love... like that sweet feeling of
   blue
The sight of her on a globe or Atlas
   still
And that name like some ancient
   spell
It sends me up into the sky
Delights, makes me feel so peaceful
The sweet blue Pacific ocean
You can...can almost taste it.

Sweet intimations of a world that
   came before,
A world underneath...that still lies
   there...somewhere
Whispering like some sweet lost
   Atlantis
Forever calling you back, calling you
   back home.

I'm afraid I can't be more specific
About the wonderful, the beautiful
...The Blue Pacific.

This terribleness. The blur of traffic lights and puddles paints Los Angeles on my face at night. It's so hard to know who will doze in my blind spots. Sunflower seeds and ******* lining the carpet. I sat on the front porch for five hours gutting the wolves from my appendices. Usually the headaches go away with the squashing of the lights. Fluorescents are the worst, halogens second, and 60-watt 120-volt light bulb the bane of my existence. I look at my phone but I cannot summon a quirky 120 character quip. I need excedrin but all I have to grape flavored children's aspirin. I should have asked for the water. How many unfinished glasses of water have I left around this world?
     Maybe Bruce and I will squash after work. I can hear his weekly catalog of two night stands with those married transient women who drive from Santa B. I hate golf, I could have made carried a career in this resentment. Maybe rolling down the window will alleviate some of this pressure. Maybe it's barometric pressure, The Baby is here in time to drag the houses out to sea. It feels like Michelangelo is carving The David in my head and it's the chiseling I've never wanted. It's Tuesday and the drugs were horrible. They killed five of them today. We wrapped their heads in blankets from the Thrifty, and had to have the interns find clothes that would fit for the Christian caskets. Two days until Giving Thanks Day.
     I am wrapped in copper and stuck in amber. I am acquitted by nonsense and stipulation, sick with nausea and pushing my forehead into the steering wheel. This is all terrible. The lying I've never told myself. The people that don't even know it's lying. Her and I always seem to escape with our happiness and pleasure in tow. The odds are slim, but our clothes have never fit too tightly.