JAWS (dedicated to Officer Brody, Chief of Police, Amity…)
We’re gonna need a bigger boat… is what
I say to Phyllis… us, surrounded by the circus
of breaching leviathans, fantails wider than
the Orca’s deck on this whale watch I swore
she’d never drag me on after twice reading
Moby Dick and watching Jaws a few too
many times (if that’s possible)…
Her seeing me as The Clown, my familiar humor only
a fleeting distraction— my sole purpose on earth: keeping
this woman in smiles— but me, seriously identifying with
Jaw’s hydrophobic Brody… weak in the knees with vertigo
at the thought of twenty thousand leagues of watery grave
looming below us, patiently trolling the surface and
waiting on Ol’ Man Gravity to reel us down…
So, humor being my best coping skill, like whistling through
the cemetery at midnight, I kill both gulls with one stone, leaning
into her as we brace for the next swell on our rubbery sea legs, and
plucking the invisible Chesterfield out of my mug and crushing it
under the toe of my boat shoe while muttering in my best Bogart…
When this tub goes belly-up, kid, shtick with me, see? I got us a plan.
“And what’s the big plan, Ahab?”
Party balloons, shweetheart… “Party balloons?” That’s right, Beautiful:
I’m packin’— The way I see it, when this floatin' coffin rolls over, I give
you half, see? That’s when we start blowin’em up ‘n stuffin’ our shirts… But...
sudden flukes slap surf off the starboard and I lose her to the spectacle
so I too marvel for a while… secretly fingering that very real packet of
red, green, yellow and blue birthday balloons…
nesting in my jacket pocket…
We’re gonna need a bigger boat… is what
I say to Phyllis… us, surrounded by the circus
of breaching leviathans, fantails wider than
the Orca’s deck on this whale watch I swore
she’d never drag me on after twice reading
Moby Dick and watching Jaws a few too
many times (if that’s possible)…
Her seeing me as The Clown, my familiar humor only
a fleeting distraction— my sole purpose on earth: keeping
this woman in smiles— but me, seriously identifying with
Jaw’s hydrophobic Brody… weak in the knees with vertigo
at the thought of twenty thousand leagues of watery grave
looming below us, patiently trolling the surface and
waiting on Ol’ Man Gravity to reel us down…
So, humor being my best coping skill, like whistling through
the cemetery at midnight, I kill both gulls with one stone, leaning
into her as we brace for the next swell on our rubbery sea legs, and
plucking the invisible Chesterfield out of my mug and crushing it
under the toe of my boat shoe while muttering in my best Bogart…
When this tub goes belly-up, kid, shtick with me, see? I got us a plan.
“And what’s the big plan, Ahab?”
Party balloons, shweetheart… “Party balloons?” That’s right, Beautiful:
I’m packin’— The way I see it, when this floatin' coffin rolls over, I give
you half, see? That’s when we start blowin’em up ‘n stuffin’ our shirts… But...
sudden flukes slap surf off the starboard and I lose her to the spectacle
so I too marvel for a while… secretly fingering that very real packet of
red, green, yellow and blue birthday balloons…
nesting in my jacket pocket…
