Salamander

Get out of my blood, salamander!

I can’t seem to blow off enough steam to get you out of my head

Soul cycle you to death, run you out of my blood to San Pedro

And yet, everywhere I go, it seems there you are

And there I am

I don’t want to sell my stories anymore, stop pushing me

Some stories aren’t meant to be sold

Some words aren’t meant to be told

I want to leave them underneath the nightstand to be forgotten

Or remembered should my thoughts

Come upon them in the middle of the night after a long beach day

Or by you, some afternoon, to thumb through with your worn warm after-work hands

I love you, but you don’t understand me, I’m a real poet!

My life is my poetry, my love making is my legacy!

My thoughts are about nothing, and beautiful, and for free

You see, the things that can’t be bought

Can’t be evaluated, and that makes them beyond human reach

Untouchable, safe, otherworldy

Unable to be deciphered or metabolized

Something metaphysical

Like a view of the sea on a summer day

On the most perfect winding road taken in from the car window

A thing perfect, and ready to become a part

Of the texture of the fabric of something more ethereal

Like Mount Olympus, where Zeus sent Athena

And the rest of the immortals plague