In Boca (In Conjunction with At The Pointe of No Return)

Five women in one-piece suits perform water aerobics graceful
As children taking their first steps while their husbands debate Guantanamo Bay
And blood pressure beneath the awning at the side of the pool.

This, the consortium of the retired, the disabled, the diabetic,
The diapered idealists, and full time vacationers, part-time sunbathers.
Some of us can hardly walk
From the kitchen to the car to the pool, and we don’t mind. Others of us squat,
Like lobsters in the Jacuzzi, squinting in the sun.

For vacation I have eaten like them, talked like them, waited,
Impatient for TV programs like them, and didn’t have sex like them.
Here, there is a thin line between Purgatory and Paradise.
We stumble through the days, through the thick,
Swampy everglade air panting like dogs, waiting for the crocodiles to leave the lakes,
In our backyards so we can throw another sirloin on the grill.

I get the urge to drive down Atlantic Boulevard
In a leisure suit and sit at the slots blowing my social security
At the casino across from the noody bar.
The contagious conduct of geriatrics.

These sexless clusters of cul-de-sacs are as beautiful and uniform
As the cemeteries evenly distributed between each gated neighborhood

Days pass.

Back at the side of the pool is the same old choir of comedians, with their wives
Who chirp in the water, their quaffed hair reminds me of Bram Stoker’s Dracula,
Dry as desert rock. Bronze lips. Leather alligator skin.
At the sight of a young girl taut beneath her bikini,
The men refrain from whistling
But don’t hesitate to ask for her age and grade.
Grandpas to some are the dirty old men to others.
A lone woman does backstrokes like a beetle fighting for its life
Its legs kicking up at the sky.

In contrast, they guilt me into flaunting my youth.