Marlon Brando

On R&R, My brother held up his beer.
Offering it to the ceiling fan
And yelled to the whole world.
"God Bless America... And No place else!"

And the neighbors
On their balcony cheered back
"Right on man!”

And so did all the other 49 states.

We had a good laugh at that.

We skateboarded through Isla Vista
And breathed the salty air
deep in our lungs

Later,
I learned that
If drunken linoleum face planting
were an Olympic sport.
Id be the stuff of legends

And the next evening
When we crept along rocky coast
My brother told me that the black gum stuck to our legs
was oil
left over from a spill in the 70's
And that dead and dying animals
were still washing up
4 decades later.

Sometimes deaths' leftovers stick to you
For years.