Sitting at the usual table by the waves.
Yellow plastic meditation refuge
Alone by the sea.
Far end of Copacabana.
End of the day.
2009
End of the world.
Soon the sea will rise
to consume the streets, buildings, city.
And it will all be sand and dust and ruin.
Again.
The end.
But for now there’s yellow plastic tables
and a chair for me to sit in
facing the waves.
For now there’s this beach side shack.
There’s tourists with cameras and shopping bags.
Here they come now.
They come and they sit at tables all around me now
sitting, talking, drinking.
Cute green alcoholic drinks.
Oblivion with fancy names.
Sitting by the sea that will soon consume us all.
The eternal rolling graveyard of aimless souls.
Now they come and sit beside me here,
chattering away frantically like noisy blind monkeys.
I sit here at my table by the waves and they come and come.
First a group of four, then six, then more
chattering wildly in their frantic tourist tongues.
On vacation. Holiday. Break. Escape.
A weekend walkabout away from offices
and schools
and jobs
and slave yards
in far off lands
like here.
And they are hungry like ants.
Pink and chubby, bored and boring
overworked overfed overpaid
overwhelmed.
Overwhelming.
Fast and frantic, desperate
and talking
talking
all talking at once all around me now.
Talking talking.
Saying nothing.
Nothing at all.
And here they come now
swarming all around me now
talking and swarming and drinking their drinks.
Smiling and chattering
in a hurry to relax.
Sitting and talking
they drink their drinks
and they shout at each other
like dogs barking at the lonely sea of night.
And even though I understand their human language
and the noises
rolling off their slippery pink gringo tongues,
I don’t understand a fucking word they say.
They are as foreign to me as space aliens.
They are of another tribe of beings.
I move my yellow plastic chair a few feet away
to the edge of the boardwalk.
I turn my back to their intruder chatter
I face the waves whose language I understand.
I contemplate the rolling crash of the tide.
As the chattering insect voices behind me
are absorbed into the matrix of the night.
Soon the vendors and beggars and peddlers
and hustlers and whores arrive
attracted to the crowded tables
like so many fruit flies
hovering above a bunch of overripe bananas.
I hold my ground in my yellow plastic chair
facing the waves.
I fend off the first wave of ragged roving
predators.
Soon the black vibration of my resounding
NO
takes shape in the air around me
and spreads like a mist of protection
and they all leave me
alone.
Soon the human traffic of day’s end will subside.
They will drink their drinks and then move on.
And with them the rats of poverty
who suck at their shadows
like drifting vampire cats in heat.
And then it will be just the waves again
and the occasional solitary drifting soul.
Like me.
Gone at last like a garbage truck wind
with all their urgent hungry human frenzy.
Now I bring my yellow plastic chair
back to its proper place
away from the sand.
Now I can sit alone in peace
once more
waiting for the seas to rise
and swallow us all up again
and again and again.
Copyright Jonathan Shaw 2009