Labor of Love II: Deep Crab Cove

 

 Now there's an LP jacket

Graphically speaking,

they really knew how to handle breasts

In which the Flaneur meets a redhead

and gets a load of the crabs

Labor Day in Alameda

An American working-class town

 Cook-out at the surf shop

 Kite-board

 

 Sunny and breezy with moderate holiday population,

I laid in the sand enjoying the laughing spashing kids

then on a bench to observe passers-by and their dogs,

But I was irresistibly drawn back to the submarine walkway

at the heart of Crab Cove

 Uh-oh here she comes again,

by herself this time

 What is this Sadie Hawkins day?

She crossed both ways with a Dad figure,

I tried to talk her out of climbing up on

the treacherously slippery rocks,

to no avail

 Chatting me up

in language talkative four-year-olds use

as if they are speaking English,

I couldn't hear an adult in this situation

Everything I say to her she asks, "What?"

 Oblivious will power,

a force of nature,

 You Tarzan,

Me Jane

 Look me up in 15 years

there Baby-feet

 We could all wind up

in the grinding surf

The old drunken boat

 Nostalgia's skeleton

in a state parking lot

under the trees

Trompe l'Oeil

Underneath le bateau ivre

Strange movement of fish

The optical illusionary world

that they inhabit,

 realm of animated cartoons

Difficult for our eyes to follow

Confusion of animal

and element

The unknowable

looking back
at you

 Understood better
once in a jar

 Geiger broth under glass
Carapace in aspic

 As eerie and foreboding

as Lovecraft or Lynch

 Manta Ray Mask Replica

 We've got their genome now

 we can farm GMO crabs at will

Paint-by-number 

genetic engineering,

child's play

 It's OK to crab

 cause they don't have any feelings

 Call that a life?

Never forget the time

 I met a megalops 

on a deep sea bottom

 Sea but through a porthole darkly

 No hurry to go home for dinner

I brought a lunch of tinned sea-food

 Crusty carnivores eat all

 Used to watch Toyko TV 

on San Francisco UHF

no subtitles but often entertaining

Once a breathlessly polite and charming 

cooking lesson by a well-dressed lady

involved pulling apart a live crab

 Evening approaches

This place has a real party rep,

a hot-rod Chevy holiday

I've got something

more domestic in mind

Hang up my beach hat,

Get out some kooky 

platters of my own

 OK, Alameda,

keep up the good work,

catch you on the flip-flops

Peace!

We out

5 September 2016