Radio Alarm Clock

There was music coming from every direction
& an offshore wind sweeping in from the foothills
A warm wind that made the waves stand up on their hind legs
crosshatched in the doctored photograph
that hung from the rearview mirror

From here it’s a clean shot to the ramshackle
tenements of Shangri-La
steeped in ruin & candlelight
Who knows what other vicarious redemption
holds a rail of saltwater to the floodlit street that cuts like a wing
into the damp night air

I thought it all resembled a tragic misinterpretation of Baudelaire

as intimations of fiscal responsibility dogged my unerring
sense of dread
To walk the streets of forever as they slope down to the sea
was all I wanted.   Palm leaves mumbling in the wind.
Beneath the beach concrete I guess maybe Chumash boxsprings
& faces carved into obsidian mirrors
as if any proof was required.   Anyway you didn’t have to
follow me there to read the soft sky repeating itself above
the wet sand moving beneath my feet

still running the voodoo down

I thought I knew the latin phrase for this
& the green sledgehammer light that filters down to the
ocean floor