Summer Vacation

or a long weekend trip

Hi Friend!

Here’s a poem/epic/story for your last weekend of cultural summer/actual last weekend of August.

A Vacation to the Place 
Where Operatic Metal Album Art and 
Certain Mass Market Paperback Covers Originate

It begins at sunset.
on a cliff.
by an ocean
who is angry enough
to spew white fury against the 
orange-ish, tan-ish, earth-tone, desert-vibe
jagged outcrop of stone
in the background.
behind you.

It begins with toned muscles,
tanned skin,
a horse with antlers,
and cloths making a loose attempt at clothes.
you either have a beard or 
have at least one strand of loose hair
making S-curves just outside your jawline.
maybe you have both.
the rest of your hair is mostly tied in a bun,
an updo so casual that its elegance seems
an act of injustice
against the hair you usually have 
on a Tuesday morning in mid January.

The sky is every color it ought to be.
it shimmers like the ascension,
like you can sense Elijah’s chariot
crossing paths with Apollo’s where they
reach out and high five as they pass,
but you are not looking at the sky, you are
not looking where it ripples with the ocean’s
turbulence. you gaze toward the land
with a calm ease in contrast to violence
of the scene behind you with it’s
whipping winds that rip your garments
into a tangle with your antler-horse’s mane
and muscled legs. the horse is revealing
instinctual fear with terror eyes
as it rears flailing its front two legs.
you stay calm. 
pose for the camera.
snap. 
that’s money.

Your hotel is exclusive,
mountainous,
precariously posted upon the jagged ridge of
rock protruding from a volcanic flow below.
check-in is at four.

The moon is full.
or close to it.
hard to tell, and you aren’t an astronomer 
(unless you are).
the moon is bright,
and that’s the fact that matters because
candlelight can’t capture the grayscale beauty of 
vanity mirrors reflecting bed curtains so sheer 
you could mistake them for ghosts. 

It’s cold.
skin rippling stuff and
your cloths that are clothes
are now all white and creases,
fluttering about because of course 
there is a draft to carry each moist cloud of breath
off your lips.

You grab a four candled candelabra and
head for the twisting stairs 
which have no handrail (incredibly precarious).
you cast a long shadow, 
navy stone blackness against flaming 
orange-ish, tan-ish, earth-tone, desert-vibe warmth.

At the bottom of the stairs is a lair
full of treasure
piled haphazardly in a cavernous cave with
giant jagged stalactite teeth
ready to chomp you to bits after the 
dragon is done chomping you to bits after the 
dragon is done spewing flames against the
metal shield you now wield
so that the fire surrounds you and flickers
with S-curving lines
like your loose strand of hair
which may be singed
or perhaps your beard is casting off sparks like 
a rod on the anvil under a blacksmith’s hammer.

You might be screaming.
it’s hard to tell.
if you are screaming, be assured:
it is not out of fear
or pain.
if you are screaming, 
it is a scream of pure adrenaline.
you may be on fire,
a little,
but you are alive! this is your vacation, 
and you are winning (maybe)
this mass market paperback battle
in the land of operatic metal album art.

You are absolutely the protagonist
of this story.
of this you are sure,
up until your vacation's
penultimate moment.

in wordy wordiness,

Walter