The sun is burning the sea, and its steaming smoke steams over
the wide clean neighborhoods and between the s-pines.

Fish exhale evening cloud cover. It pushes up over the western
mountains like the blanket of a smoker, then bursts into smoky flame.
Pieces float in a river of cold water wind like burning icebergs.

The thermometer shivers in the cold west wind. Monet looks upward
and gains inspiration. Money looks upward, inspiration for the homedrivers.
Monet's wife and child have to wear a jacket in this wind. It's been
scrubbed clean of heat. Only cold oxygen rides these breezes.

All the water in the ocean only sizzles the sinking sun. Torpedoed by
a cold front, the sun disgorges cargoes of clouds as it founders broken
in the ocean, far out toward Japan. The humbled sun is no match for the
Humboldt Current. Tonight it sleeps with the fishes.

Tomorrow morning the Japanese drink tea in villages of neon. Their
mentholated cigarette smoke travels back over the dateline to today,
leaping high like a cow over the sun, like a river of cows, menthol
cloud-seeding storms over the Western United States. This is the
Menthol Cigarette Effect.

The claws of planes, sprung loose like hooks of brassieres, tick-tacky
higher to the north — tents burn and roll, the dirty white robes of sunset.
There are no sandstorms here, over Zuma Beach. Dirty white beach towels
torn away in the cold wind. Only crazy old men swim in this dirty winter surf.