Summer 1969 / Michael G. Munoz

Summer 1969

The first turn of July heat
And I was growing fast
Leaning into the sun
Like the nascent fan palms sprouting up
Through the cracked black asphalt in the street
Long summer days
Of no breeze and sweet lemonade
Growing restless with myself
No money
No car
Maybe a dime for ice cream at Save-Ons

It seemed the whole damn world was getting tighter
My clothes too tight
Shoes too tight
Rooms too tight
Money too tight
And all the friends I had
All my life
Were slowly unwinding into strangers

Potheads
Pillheads
Speedfreaks
With beer and cigarettes
With drums and plugged-in guitars
Or worse
With bibles
And like a novice dabbling into the occult
I tried them all
But none of it mystified me
Not like the hypnotic allurement
Of females

I hooked up with Louie Angel that summer
Who lived down the street
And what little
We had in common
Was quickly and quietly filled
By the newly stocked waters of Peck Park Pool

Girls would come out of the water
And pass in front of us
Shivering, giggling, arms crossed, mouths open
Running in short little steps
In packs of threes and fours
Across the roughed out bleached concrete
To a corner in the shade

We would raise up our sunburned faces
Like sleepy little turtles
And from our soggy towels
And peer quizzically
At all these walking mysteries
And whatever lessons
We had learned from the squared-up games
Of baseball, football, or basketball
In our dismal squared-up lives
They could not free us
From this entanglement of the senses

These girls were candy-canes
Hanging from the poisoned vines
Of our imaginations
We just had to figure out how to get to  them
We had to figure them out

Who to walk with
Who to follow
How far were they going
Through which neighborhoods and
Most importantly
Which ones liked us back
And we had to figure this out
Me and Louie
Without saying
More than two words to each other

So me being utterly unambitious
Or at least being the more practical one
Mostly walked with the girls heading south
While Louie
Being the gambler
And having no reason to ever go home
Seeing as he lived with six sisters
Usually picked a girl
That lived over
On the other side of Peck Park Canyon
But it really didn't matter
Once we fixed an address
We'd go back later in the evening
Trekking as partners
Great adventurers
No distance too great or high
Ducking hurled insults
In the shape of rocks
Or dodging chained up dogs
As we shortcut
Down through dusty canyons
And across vacant lots
Through busted up fences and down alleys
That shone in the moonlight
Like galaxies of broken glass
To end up on the white porches
Of sunburned girls
Who weren't allowed to walk anywhere
With a couple of boys like us

Summer
You once kissed my lips and face
Graced my hands with your sweet fruits
And then you moved on
But not before leading me
Into a new season

Not before
Tossing me high high in the air
Mixed-up colors and words
Streaming in the sunlight
Falling to the earth
Like confetti

And although I didn't know it at the time
While leaning into doorways
And mumbling low hellos
I was whispering
A shy good-by
To my innocence
Forever

~~
Michael G. Munoz
2010
California, U.S.A.

[All rights reserved by the author - Used with permission]

Dietmar Rabich, Santa Monica State Beach, California, July 2012.

CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons.

Conjuror / Michael G. Munoz

Conjuror

I can wait no longer
I mix your powders
Red and green
Gold and deep brown
Mix with smoke
With fire, with sandalwood
I conjure you
An apparition
To sit on my bed
Sit at my feet
I mix your powders
Into fine grains
I imagine your dark eyes
The thin amber dress you wear
I conjure you
And the oil
And the salts
Become your lips
Your cheeks
Your face
The incense swirls
Twists in the draft
It is you
Alive, dancing,

Here I work an old magic
Forming you
Delivering you
I count out stars
Throw them
Into the folds of your body
Into the tangle of your hair

In my eyes
There you linger
Near a window
By a mirror
I put the whisper in your mouth
The heave in your breast
I conjure you
You are here now
Almost to touch
Almost to kiss

The immeasurable lightness of joy

~~
Michael G. Munoz
February 2011
California, U.S.A.

[All rights reseerved by the author - Used with permission]

Balance / Michael G. Munoz

Balance

The piano player plays a French number
Right out of an old black and white French movie
The dancers of my daughter's junior ballet
Pirouette right on cue
While I sit, writing,
In a plastic chair against the wall.
The mothers in the lobby listen to the music,
Intently watching their daughters
Like a tabby watches a sparrow hop.
The teacher yells instruction to keep time.
When I look up, in contemplation,
Mothers smile at me,
I smile back at them.

I used to like this part of town,
Old Torrance.
Pawn shops, dingy hotel rooms, liquor stores,
Vacuum repair, Mexican restaurants,
Locksmiths, used record stores, dark bars.
The town is in its fourth or fifth reincarnation
Having died off many times before
Only to be brought back to life by
Shedding off the Pussycat Theater
And exchanging it with Senior Living Condos
As it waits on the next benevolence of death.

I used to sit in an Irish bar around the corner
For the hour and a half it took
While she danced,
Drinking Guinness with a fatherly devotion
Watching stupid soccer matches between countries
That got mowed down
75 years ago.
But I've stopped drinking for now
And so I wait and try to write
In the front lobby of the Ballet School
But now this room smells sour
Like milk gone bad or maybe it's sweat
Or maybe it's just me.
The accompanist plays another French number
The teacher blares out more instruction
As the music rises and falls.

Now it's my turn . . .
I start to write, furiously,
Trying to keep up to the music.
I try to write a barroom story
But it's hopeless
For there's no art in saloons
The barstool is not an easel
And there's no balance to the stagger of a drunk
No beauty to a woman's dumbstruck melancholic face
No interplay of light and shadows there
Nothing sublime
To the perfect pour of a bartender
Or the mad mad broken-up lovers
Who have just leapt gracefully
Over the edge of their despair and into the streets,
Back to the four walls of loneliness
They call home.

I look up from my pages
Just as my little swan
Leaps and turns,
Her face a rictus of concentration.
She practices at grace,
Practices at the defiance of gravity,
Practices at control and poise,
While I would no more practice at my failures
Than a snake would practice his slither.
And now the music fades on the old spinet piano
And my baby
With a flourish of arms
And the point of her leg
Finishes her dance.

I could write
For a thousand years
And never
Capture
In words
The balance of her beauty.

~~
Michael G. Munoz
October 2010
California, U.S.A.

[All rights reserved by the author - Used with permission]