All Debts Real & Imagined

Knowing the indulgences
& the ripple trail in Latin
landing on water
              sipping at the pale sunlight that
                              tunnels thru a thin layer of smog
to light up palm trees & pelicans
              wrecked on adrenalin & perfume
too near too intricately woven into
what I suppose is my consciousness
                              or something close to that
              tossed like an empty from the railing
as one could summon bare puddles
                              collapsing into their own reflections
like the relics of a failure you could never surrender
to fevered lips
              stung by salt spray lifted from the marathon tide
& a couple million lightyears later
                              it shatters on the sunburnt pavement
outside the Moby Taco
              a block from the beach
& you’re just going to have to wait
                              inside the shadows that strum the palisades
on the next to last day of summer

All Debts Public & Private

Even if I didn’t mean what I said
the tattooed sky would still have tilted
              the way an afterimage remains
                              like a star hooked on shadows
elicits that sad lookaway in the fading light
I figure would take at least 150 pages to
explain
              some days seem endless like a Russian novel
others are more like a failed reality show
              From vaulted cathedral glass
                              to tropic pavements
                                                & sleek getaway
              engines doomed to
                              mortal destiny
              fuel injected
                                                Aztec interiors
              multiplied by degrees of Nowhere
I should have died in TJ that time
              I had my ticket punched & everything
shuffling through the glass pages of every ocean
                              in the backseat at 90 miles an hour
& she was gazing out thru the windshield
              inventing thermodynamics
pictured as a beautiful blue tide
rushing in beneath the burnt-pink windows
of forever

The one who knocks

As though that which is non negotiable might
consecrate the distance
              between your monsoon balcony
& the long way back
                              across the sand
Flicker of wings maybe
              seashells & eye shadow
if only to articulate the damp strings
& suicide drumroll
              & when they fish you out it’ll be like Christmas
in August
                              as you may hear yourself whisper
the air shaped by eucalyptus leaves the color of
gunmetal pearls
              if there was any other way to say it
the blue girl with the orange lipstick
                              lit from the inside like a japanese lantern
so that the fog seems to genuflect
              on the concrete steps above the beach
& I got there first
the light just easing in thru the mist
                              like the powder in my veins

Angle of Repose

I love the way you bend in the rain
              like a double-jointed palm tree
as the flashlight batteries give out
                              & you blink like a shadow in a
swimming pool

              Arcades of black eternity in blue mascara
                              out there in the rippling seaweed
the meaning of time like a stolen wristwatch
                              described as silver
                                                                & lonely

& everything else the fortune teller
              forgot to say
                                                as gulls carve your name
into the clouds
              leaving no doubt as to the intent
                              painted green
                                                & handcuffed to a tidepool

I guess it’s just another way of not being seen
              although from here it’s all beach pavement
& gasoline

                              & you can sing along if you want to
following these damp footprints back to when you
never knew the difference

                                                rattling in the
tabernacle of silence like a whispered vow or
covenant
                              as though that which is non negotiable might
consecrate the distance between your monsoon balcony
& the long way back across the sand

Radio Silence

Dreamed of Joanne & Donald
walking in Oaxaca
              beneath a sky scorched by
turquoise flames.

              The camera angle was such that
each step reenacted a
                              graceful sadness

usually reserved for a Japanese poem
              read through binoculars
                              on the neighbor’s TV.

Long Trip Out

You occupy a shadow
              (the rain gathering above the beach)
That you were there at all should have been enough

“the forest primeval” / The Florist of Evil

                                                (wouldn’t that be Baudelaire?)

I couldn’t find my sunglasses
& then I did
they were right there where the invisible
skeleton hand left them

              Nietzsche―“When you look into the abyss
              the abyss also looks into you”

Saying anything at all is difficult enough
without having to settle upon One Absolute Meaning

Explanations are
                              almost always a disappointment

              The water was cold
                              the waves had a glassed-in purity
              that shattered into white foam
                                                with plumes of mist flying back

                              the Dragon in the Waves

I don’t know where we’re going but we’ll be there any minute now

Seems Like Forever

The sky got dark
                              absentmindedly
              & then the rain…

it was more like snorting meth
w/Jacques Cousteau
              than reciting Sailing to Byzantium
backwards

& the Tibetan monk you resembled
in profile only
had a crowbar up his sleeve
which is just the thing when your
eyes snap
                              like a rubber band
& the shadow of your heart
wrapped in tinfoil
              discovers a new use for gravity

Behind every lifesize replica there’s
a 12-pack in the fridge
              & a revised history of violence
where the western sky
                              gets tipped on edge
& spills over the horizon
              fading into the irrevocable
haze of your morturary eyes

A Spoonful of Day-Glo Neon

like a door that
              opens on the evening tide
& shuts on every
                              question you never asked
making you feel sexy in the
smog-lit parking lot
              your heart ticking like a time
bomb
              just a little something to set alongside the
                              octopus in the bathysphere
& you can watch
the ocean bending its blue-green steel
around the point
                              as the sky gets heavy
& there’s no exit but
              the one
                              eyewitness account
buried in the sand

Split the Difference

 
You think it will never end

& then it does