return from Newport

This town smells like dead grass and dry earth,
mediocre devastation of dirty dishes and stale air
and the sweet feeling of surrendering away from all that
to just sit on the steps with torn clothing and ashes 
falling away from your mouth while the roses bloom
and the houses around invisibly slouch into the earth.

Because all this is real, and that posh beach town
just an illusion like Disneyland of a different kind of life
which we don't live, and no one ever does,
but only pretends to.

And Jesus never walked there.
But here he bums twenty-five cents by the gas station,
and sits by the mulberry tree
with the post-punk philosophers
in the dust.

Well once I heard he went there 
with a whip in his hand and cleaned out
the barnacles on the rocks
which catch you for sure before you get too far out
and after that he walked there on the white sea and
felt immensity.