Stephen Williams
Boardwalk Dragons
Walking the boardwalk in a white robe, the wind blows straight through her.
A surfer pets a bloodhound. A piano cashes a check. I do my work, the palmtrees do theirs. The seagulls, the sand, the sea, the huge light, and the dragons.
By the sea I had my demons twisted out of me. By another man. The waves just laughed. Dragons are rational beings, but I never would have thought the waves were too.
Are we on earth. In labs and olive groves, studying the future. Hideous as Adam and Eve looking back over their shoulders.
You begin to see yourself as a person before whom and after whom. But also a person terribly late.
Someone’s placed tinsel, and wind, and green, in the highest of the palm trees.
The library is the theater. But on the beach, on the ball court, they are performing peace, sharing beatific certainty, sometimes dragons take on human form, having conversations with humans, aye, they rent our condos, get jacked on Muscle Beach, wine and dine and fuck them / us, etc.
But dragons are born of dragons. Minstrels and strongmen, apostates, apothecaries. Autocorrect demons. Rappers. All manner of hats. List of things to churn and things to churn them into. You can only churn in one direction, never backward.
Summer music in the big windy stores. Makes you want to sit still. Peace to be had on the cheap.
Are these images the messengers that will transport you back to your (in any event, unredeemable) past? Who wants what and what it means. His books have been translated into over a dozen languages including plasma, bronze urns, the cedar waxwing, Chris Marker's handbanging cat, blue hats . . .
The Agathodaemon does not have venom. It is a benevolent spirit. Its eyes sit golden in its skull.
Thunderstorms decline along the beach like the benevolent hand of God.
Venice faces Byzantium. No, I meant Venice California. Venice California faces Santa Monica.
Dragons like salamanders tend toward the dry and fiery. They shut their eyes and sleep leaps through their heads like lightning.