There’s a certain pleasure

in doing trivial things

next to the sea.

Like thinking up off rhymes

based on the names of fruit

or making animals

with our fingers.

It’s a defense really,

kind of an urge

we get when the sea

arches its back

and collapses

again and again

at the edge of its own eternity.

Let us wear strange hats

and stare out at the sea.

Let us assemble great lines

of useless words to release

at the sea. Let us take advantage

of its implacability

to say shocking things.

Hopeless, foolish little dances

at the low tide mark

revel in our shared slavery

to various facts of physics,

but satisfy our seldom filled

need to be sophomoric, disrespectful.

The sea is filling in for death

today, motivating us to whistle

poorly past its big facts.

Lets build a bonfire too close

to the water, and ordain ourselves

princes of a glorious irrelevance.