I hate the beach
I'm eighty six and I hate the beach
Hate the sand, not a fan of the surf
Face it, I hate the beach
Last time I went there
I had just turned 18 years old
June sixth, Nineteen Hundred Forty Four
God, I hate the beach
I was in the 5th Regiment
Régiment de Maisonneuve
and I've never been to a beach since
I'm from Verdun, Quebec, Canada
Not many beaches around there
Thank the lord for that I say
We'd been training for six months
Operation Overlord it was called
We were coming in on troop carriers
It was to be a beach head landing
I'd never seen a beach before
At least not for real
Never want to see another
We arrived early June 6, 1944
I think I said that already
You must forgive me,
I'm 86 years old and I hate the beach
fourteen thousand Canadian Troops
Bursting out of armoured troop ships
Like, the young, virile, brahma bulls we were
Coming in, all I could hear was the waves
I was in front, well...close to the front
I remember, there were no birds
who ever heard of that?
A beach with no birds
At least not at this beach
I could smell the salt in the air
And I knew I could hear the surf
And my heart, I could **** well hear that
But, no birds, I couldn't hear the birds
Gunfire, nope...cannons and mortars
But birds and guns, not a sound
Weird huh?
I remember running forward
Always forward, past blocks
Wood barricades and barbed wire
And bodies, lots of bodies
I knew that I knew some of them
I just didn't have time to stop
And say goodbye,
I just ran
Emptied my weapon at least once
I only know this, because it was empty
when I hit the beach
God, I hate the beach
You know in the movies
or in those flowery books
where they talk about someone being shot
and how "there was a bloom or
they're chest flowered red where they were hit"
I never saw that, never looked back
Just ran forward, saw the "bloom" in their backs
Don't like red, or flowers or the beach
I don't remember much after that
Could still hear my heart
That's a good thing, I guess
I got tore up good with the wire
but I never got shot
Never, "bloomed" for anyone
A few of my buddies were lost
I toast them every year
Never at the beach though
I hate the beach
Wife and kids used to go
I never did, never will
I remember the 50th anniversary though
Wife and kids went back
Not me,
Went into Montreal to see a ball game
Montreal Expos 10, Houston Astros 5
I remember Will Cordero hitting a homer
It was the sixth inning, I toasted the hit
I thought about that day 50 years before
And went back to watching the game
I hate the beach
My name is Gilles Roquefort
I'm eight six years old
And I can still feel the sand and taste the salt
On a bad day.

Succulent, meaty, ribs falling off the bone and drenched in a velvety, thick, sauce.
“Check please.”

Tender chunks of lobster tail bathed in sweet, drawn, butter.
“Thank you. That will be all.

Heavy, cream-coated, strands of fettuccine accompanied by fresh peas, Speck, and shaved Parmesan.
“I wish I could stay but I can’t.”

Filet. Rare. A veil of Roquefort and sautéed wild mushrooms in a Sauternes reduction.
“It's just not the right time.”

Perfectly seasoned carne asada with a creamy roasted poblano sauce, queso fresco and the cool, half-mooned, sultry innards of a Hass avocado.
“I'll call you tomorrow”

A decadent Kobe burger blanketed in cheeses, caramelized onions, crisp bacon, and a cap of unctuous foie grois.
“But thank you for everything.”

Peanut butter and jelly on white bread.
And you would have me forever.

and sometimes in russia you can be found going to the opera, and drinking квас (rootbeer is the only known equivalent)... and you joke and say how it looks: k'bac (make the word batch acute... ć? actually... flatline the end of how k'bac would look like __). evidently, in a land where в = v and с = s... is not the same land where they do that k.c.s. trick of interpolation / interweaving... sure inter based on particularly worded example... otherwise intra basis for keeping a symbol that morphs; slippery *******, those phonetic eels.

i call it the samurai haircut...
because... it ****** well looks like...
the way dave rubin's hairline
becomes enclosed in the headphones?
    that'**** is ******* samurai...
mind you i'm drunk and looking
at the screen at a distance that would
suggest it to be so...
             *******'s donning a
                                          chonmage!
i'm all for carousels and ferris wheels...
i like the: whoop-d-doo-da'h
special effects, but this **** is twisted,
now i'm the one laughing...
                what the hell is up with that?
and when i listen to *tool's
cover of peaches you lied...
    one image... charon swinging left to right
(or right to left)... swinging a scythe,
very labourously (laboriously -
thing with post-german languages is that
they use too many vowels... ******* can't
get enough of them... spelling this *******
out is like them trying to learn to state
a sz sound... it's just a sh...
son darling, really? hush, or listen to some
deep purple or kula shaker... mm'kay?)        
                                             d      f
% 2 !          7    &         (looking for a dot,
given the faux pas aesthetic of ? followed by it...
of wait... for it is normal given ?!
                     oh look here! there's the little *******!
         .
               now that became completely pointless.
try covering blind melon's swong no rain...
   you'll probably find it easier taking
to a palette for roquefort cheese,
            or actually allowing milk to "go off"
until it becomes skisłe
also called bopping along / dancing in your chair...
wait a minute: i was only thinking about the spelling
the karousel... thinking about the ferris-wheel...
  and c... middle name's conrad...
never had "gone off" milk with warm potatoes?
so i'm guessing you never had yoghurt?
i do acknowledge that the consistency is parallel,
but skisłe milk? (add a w to combat the diacritical
distinction in the stated tongue)...
    that sort of milk is gone, way gone,
   you can't serve it with warm baby potatoes
immersed in butter and the herb dill...
   actually? **** it... can't be nostalgic about
the end of the 20th century, i just want to drink
the kind of milk that can go sour...
    and form clots... it's practically yoghurt...
                something an esklimo might call home...
but it's gone... too many preservatives,
the whole natural process is gone,
          this milk i'm drinking?
                            it won't turn sour... it will look
as it was originally intended, but when the counter-nature
movement moves in to allow it to degenerate
into something: o.k., i admit, when it turns
into a quasi yoghurt form...
  but that interview with dave rubin with joe rogan...
a ******* chonmage with the earphones dave...
i must be seeing double,
     maybe the drunk "glasses" can be put to
a more effective use; other than (insert english slang):
seeing a real butters queen-b of chav-dom.
              i'd still **** her though, drunk or sober,
like i once mentioned: anything that moves (to a friend).
now i realise this is getting serious,
    compromised on half an hour to write my
father's roofind invoice like chopin...
i rarely look at the keyboard... so it's either the machine-gun
or piano metaphor for the computer keyboard,
definitely not a general practitioner's
crow-pecking a snail out of dynamic... index peck...
peck... peck... index peck... peck...
                7 days' worth of activity done in half an hour...
he was watching chelsea vs. man utd. and it was
the quarter finals in the f.a. cup...
      i stood there trying to keep the supermarket
walk ritual open until 11pm for my usual dose...
in the 77th minute of the match i forgot the ballerinas
   and heard that there would be a semi-final draw...
back in a minute...
                          so off i went...
       and came back drinking a 85pence ale...
       mmm... fruity...
                             the wheat extract brew was much better
though; i actually had to sniff the head of the bottle
because i: wasn't shopping for perfumes.
that said, i can't remember the last time i washed my entire
body... armpits? sure, everyday... teeth?
what is preached to children, a pea sized dollop
and then the tactic of: quickly does it;
under 30seconds... they tell you you should do it for 3minutes?
they're into employing dentsists.
  oh yeah... that milk thing?
                           what's your suggestion on the sugar
lactose and diabetes?
     what's truly problematic though?
the form... i start of thin... and then my poems become
fat... it's annoying to the point that there is no comparison
to justify this demise...
             like i want a waterfall precision...
but end up with a pyramid (or thereabouts)...
uh, wonky, ~... doing the egyptian wavy hand
gesture... or more like a seesaw: left? right? right?
what?! left?!
                       but most of the time i think about
my uncle (my mother's brother) and the year
when red hot chili peppers released
   their album californication, and spending the summer
working on his vintage porsche, and eating
chips and hot chicken wings...
        mental illness? that's when you turn compuslive...
memory? i can't control my memory...
memories are just conjured like spells culminating
into a jinn being summoned...
                     it's true what they say:
you are bound to not think if the other two major
faculties as stressors to overcome the "need" to think
(and when did happen that einstein ran a marathon
and thought up his *******?) -
                       my main interest is memory,
and to counter the theory of natural selection...
i conjure up memory...
              obviously i have no care for darwinian arguments,
solipsistic? sure, why wouldn't i be?
                     with regard to how i was treated?
it's a pretty natural and readily available resource
to introduce a membrane akin to a cactus.

sunglass and a drink
watching a street-lamp in the dark...
hell...
      that's schizophrenic...
              the light
just splits...
                                     it just splits!
i'm seeing double(s)...
                i must be on acid...
  because this light source is
encompassing (hiding) a twin!
            the laziest of the most
                           skint boston fweaks;
or as i like to call them:
                  the milk-maids
             for the dog dubbed zero...
yeah, this is the part where i growl,
and never ask for applause.
  it was only me, looking at a street-lamp...
and to think... it only took an
      aperitif's worth of brie cheese...
considering... roquefort.... is
the most justifiable joice of joke.

Rêve

On a faim dans la chambrée -
C'est vrai...
Émanations, explosions. Un génie :
« Je suis le gruère ! » -
Lefêbvre « Keller ! »
Le génie « Je suis le Brie ! » -
Les soldats coupent sur leur pain :
« C'est la vie ! »
Le génie. - « Je suis le Roquefort ! »
- « Ça s'ra not' mort !... »
Je suis le gruère
Et le Brie !... etc.

Valse

On nous a joints, Lefèbvre et moi, etc.

Purple as tulips in May, mauve
into lush velvet, purple
as the stain blackberries leave
on the lips, on the hands,
the purple of ripe grapes
sunlit and warm as flesh.

Every day I will give you a color,
like a new flower in a bud vase
on your desk. Every day
I will paint you, as women
color each other with henna
on hands and on feet.

Red as henna, as cinnamon,
as coals after the fire is banked,
the cardinal in the feeder,
the roses tumbling on the arbor
their weight bending the wood
the red of the syrup I make from petals.

Orange as the perfumed fruit
hanging their globes on the glossy tree,
orange as pumpkins in the field,
orange as butterflyweed and the monarchs
who come to eat it, orange as my
cat running lithe through the high grass.

Yellow as a goat’s wise and wicked eyes,
yellow as a hill of daffodils,
yellow as dandelions by the highway,
yellow as butter and egg yolks,
yellow as a school bus stopping you,
yellow as a slicker in a downpour.

Here is my bouquet, here is a sing
song of all the things you make
me think of, here is oblique
praise for the height and depth
of you and the width too.
Here is my box of new crayons at your feet.

Green as mint jelly, green
as a frog on a lily pad twanging,
the green of cos lettuce upright
about to bolt into opulent towers,
green as Grand Chartreuse in a clear
glass, green as wine bottles.

Blue as cornflowers, delphiniums,
bachelors’ buttons. Blue as Roquefort,
blue as Saga. Blue as still water.
Blue as the eyes of a Siamese cat.
Blue as shadows on new snow, as a spring
azure sipping from a puddle on the blacktop.

Cobalt as the midnight sky
when day has gone without a trace
and we lie in each other’s arms
eyes shut and fingers open
and all the colors of the world
pass through our bodies like strings of fire