Boy, 15, Surfer

You gotta go in to eat sometime
And to drink
Ironically

You get dehydrated
From being out too long
On the water

Got a nice stomach
Got a nice tan
Got a girl looking at you
Like she likes you
Because she does

Because girls
And boys
Most people
Are drawn
To lion tamers

And that's what you are

The waves are lions
And you beat them back
With your chair
Then ride them around the ring
Only falling when you want to fall

Only being bitten
When you feel your skin's too tight
And you need to let
Some of the air out

In school Friday they talked about futures
Various futures of various students
Because sophomore year will turn into junior year will turn into senior year
And then where the fuck are you gonna be?

Still out here?

Still riding lions?

Still spending every Saturday morning
At Vacco
Or Trade City
Or San Juego?

Still hanging out with guys three times your age
With skin like melted leather
Talking about how shitty the waves are now
How they were better twenty years ago
Before you were born

You wanna tell them to fuck off
That the waves are ten times better
And everybody knows it
And everybody knows the old men are just mad
Because they don't have the bodies
To tame the new waves

Not like you do, right?

Sometimes you get bitten too hard

You miscalculate
You misinterpret
You get too close
To shiny white teeth

That's when you wash up on shore
Like a broken board
Only to find that the watching girls
Stopped watching
Because they were too nervous

Your lack of fear
Makes them feel afraid

You laugh and notice
You can't hear out of your right ear

That's happened before
But this time it seems--

Fuck it

Who needs to hear?

Who needs to see?

Who needs to ride forever?

You don't ride and hope to stay up

You like to crash

You like the feeling of crashing

You like the break
And the slap
And the burn
And the blackness of it

You like knowing you may not wash up
This time around

That this time the lions may circle
And swallow you up

And then it'll be like you never existed
And in school there'll be an empty desk
With no note on top of it
To tell anyone where you are

'Cause you're nowhere

No more future talk

You'll be a part of the water
The waves
The crash

And in that way
You'll live forever

As long as the Earth doesn't dry up
And if it does
You'll go into the air

You'll be the new San Juego
And other fifteen-year-old's will take you on
Thinking they can unlock
Whatever it is you put away
The day you went under

But for now the lions are calm
They're not that hungry
Not today

So you ride
And you tame
And a little part of you
Feels let down

Feels like it's all getting
Way too easy