I walk down the beach
to the benches
by the pier
and sit,
pull my newspaper
from my pocket;
a nice mild morning
no one near
except a guy
on a bench
some yards away
his feet on the bench
and rear on the top rail
“hey!” he calls, “how are you doing?”
I turn to my horoscope
“bad day for social interaction”
“hey! How are you doing?”
I do not like the look
of the guy’s face
or his orange-tinted sunglasses
that glow like the sun–
“hey! how are you doing?”
“good”
“doing ‘REAL good’ or just ‘good’?”
“great”
“oh! ‘great’ not just ‘good’!”
A gull squawks overhead.
On the guy’s t-shirt an imprint
of a raised middle finger.
“You looking for trouble?”
He reaches down into a back pack
at his feet;
“don’t do that!”
I pull my snub-nosed .38.
He looks up at me, then at the gun
then goes back to fumbling in the pack.
The gun goes off:
he grunts, falls forward
arms cradling his gut;
“you shot me,” he croaks.
“Why did you shoot me?”
He spits the words out…
Above his head three pelicans float
in the hazy sky.
I hear the surf splash onto shore.
I could tell him that
I did not mean to,
but–so what?
I walk down the beach
thinking
maybe he will die;
tell myself that
if so
nobody will miss
one asshole
less.
