After the Late Show

All’s quiet in the sub-domain
You walk in the front & walk out the back.
The resulting silence is profound
unutterably decadent
& choice
w/a tendency towards mysterious disciplines
heretofore unacknowledged.
A dirt road takes you through the marshlands
along the slough & thus to the sea.
Let us get back in the game.
The jetty is composed of rotted pieces of cement
removed from the ruins of what was once a city.
You can still hear footsteps & the whine of rubber tires
within these busted pieces of manmade stone.
Places to go. Things to do.
Big engines revving it up at the stoplight.
Some of these broken slabs of roadway
(still bearing the painted white line)
host colonies of barnacles & mussels,
others with exposed re-bar rusting
garlanded w/seaweed.
This is how it is going to be.
The ocean however is relatively unchanged.
The tides still ebb & flow.
The fog rolls in the same way & dissipates by noon
to reveal a sky blue sky much as we remembered it to be.
Waist-high surf curling in around the
edge of the jetty offers a blue-green promise. Nearly translucent.

Midnight doesn’t ring a bell
There’s a red house over yonder
with a sky above it that just won’t quit.
I had found this plexiglass
bulletproof point break not far from there
where mist lifts like smoke off the water
feathering the edge of waves.
All that silver & jade
scattered on the surface of the water.
Reflections abandoned like unfinished business
printed on the surface of the water.
Just the ache & tremor of it
with kelp forests peaking
that is rolling in the pulse of waves
that are older than the day
god changed his name.

Splashdown
Feel it in yr knees when the wind rips
thru LAS PALMAS (elegant green plumes
revving their engines

                              (A dark like silver & damp
                              where you part the drizzle
                              & I hop in the car & floor it
                              all the way back down the coast
                              in reverse

The empty circle, the vacant lot, the
beach deserted & the horizon

              too dark to see it but if you could you’d
              know exactly just how far you
              have to go

Short Film by George Greenough (song by Band of Frequencies)

All I've Found by Band of Frequencies. Film by George Greenough. from Band of Frequencies on Vimeo.

Sean Penn will reprise the role of Jeff Spicoli in the movie version of this poem

The ocean fog reads like a
Diebenkorn cheat sheet
slicing the weather
& tilting parking lots down
toward the sea
where the soundtrack’s an
instrumental for mandolin & tidal wave
A ripple thread creasing your heart
in the grip of madrigals & torch ballads
The way the wind confides in a steel guitar
shouldn’t have led you past the dazzle
The trees all lit up on whatever medicine was available
& everything you thought you knew
surrendered to a kind of tormented love I call “Snake Eyes”
but drifting as in a mist of haze
if only to to exhaust the delicate narcotic
of our perforated resolve

The wet pavement was as dark as her eyes

It was like springtime in Abysssinia
& we were watching the rock & roll picture show
through binoculars
                              & the 36 chainsmoking buddhas in my hip pocket
were preaching a kind of punk compassion I
could really learn to dance to

My irreparable blue eyes
              gazing down into the windows of your
                              (I don’t know) soul?

              trying to find something to rhyme with
              the wind strumming the eucalyptus

                              I guess waves crashing like shattered glass at sunset
                                                                would be the acoustic version

              If I had a nickel for every time I crossed the beach
              & never came back I could buy you something
              nice to wear just so I could watch you take it off

Rusted puddles, ritual Viking filtertips, liquid silver & the time it takes

The sea-breeze strumming the wires to inoculate a feather of drifting fog that just now starts to dissolve.   No real choice but what darkens the blood seven miles from the vague notion that there ought to be twenty one steps from here to the beach (there are 32) & nothing follows you across the wet pavement except a few rogue rain-drops & the Lankavatara Sutra like a chainsaw throbbing in the ridge-bone above your left eye & whatever else was stashed among the needles & pearls that define this early morning ocean light

          & as the fog peeled off
          another blue sky that
          no one’s ever seen before I said
          Here’s one semi-brilliant moment in the otherwise
          fitful swampage of the day

                        you only get one

          & we left the motor running
          when we walked out to the edge
          as though there was a chance we’d
          actually make it back

Somewhere Near

Fog drifts past in the dream-colored aftermath (pale
morning light

it isn’t yours until you give it away

              like something you
              pour out of an empty bottle

I’ve got everything we need right here
except food & money but
              there’s plenty of air
w/music in it
                              & blank sheets of poetry
to fan the flames
              & keep the eternal cigarette lit

                              a unit of measure

                              none so exact or useful as zero
                              (that blank stare

out near the flapping
wings you can always trade in for a damp stretch of
pavement

              the bump & grind of the shorebreak
                              windows in the sea
                                                & her eyes…

her eyes like the lighted doorways to a ruined temple
which is her mind
              interior designed by M.C. Escher
resembling a medieval parking structure

paved with clouds

Fire in the Sky

The morning
wedged into a corner of the window
still dark but light enough to
shut impatient dreams
delicately entwined
              The few lines I scribbled in the night
seem this morning to be written in sanskrit?
                              A leadpipe reckoning
                                                A little coffee & kerosene at low tide
Interior landscapes where I don’t find you
              & less than a mile from here
                              it all turns to glass
------------------------------------------------
Pacific Overture
The dragon in the waves is our
connection to the East

The East is west of here
------------------------------------------------
The Dalai Lama’s stoked
he’s got a California reggae garage version of
Mystery Train
going full blast in his head 24-7

I wonder how many sunsets it takes to
get that transparent

The wind whispers like wings in a dream as a darker, more subdued idea of time takes hold, inside

Drifting past night stars, Ventura radio
& the turquoise narrative

I often think of the tear-stained pavement
of Todos Santos

but where I live it’s wall to wall ocean
thus to drift is character

& all them immensities of the sea
at dark of noon beneath your midnight sunburn

Only the tender caress of oblivion she said
can take the guesswork out of mercy

Saturation Point

A FINE MIST OF HAZE
The wind backs down the
tide picks up & we’re no different
counting every ripple in the heart

BURIED IN WHISPERS
All night long the sea from which the rain is quote
Love made known
so that the Earth might speak, Ocean
sing

SUMMERTIME
Your daddy is a millionaire
Your mother is a contest winner

THE FLUORESCENT COAST
The sky turned a kind of
bleached blonde color that
stained our eyes

LONG PAST GONE
You provide the sleek shadowing
& stark exterior logic
I’ll handle the employees