Corruption

The blue sky jumps off the
                              chipped tooth of eternity
              within the confines of our souls
                                                                each to the other
                              curving away from a well-lit future
              self-indulgent & tough
                                                rocking the dark
                              corrugated Pacific steel
                                                                that nails your shadow
                                                to the sand

Beautiful nowhere & the green sledgehammer light

Tell me what it is & who it might resemble
so that I can learn to sleep through the
really important parts
assuming your reluctance is more like a made for TV sequel than
fog laying down
              flat upon the water
                              on the darkest day of summer
in late November
                              lit up like a cigarette in front of a firing squad
which makes your Mexican silver seem even more perfectly timed
your wrists smelling of mud & eucalyptus
I thought of the bells ringing in your own private Tijuana
& what it might look like from a parking lot in Ventura
just before it rains
                              & everywhere you turn it’s going to be there too
no matter how you say it
The tide excavated by all the zeroes in hundreds of thousands of
millions of kalpas played in reverse & rattling
              like the skeleton of a harmonica at three in the morning
which is why the sky tilts down into the sea every afternoon here
                              explains your moist eyes & camouflage lip-gloss
although I had to rename every blade of sand
              from the jetty to the pier & back again
giving all that has been taken
                                          as one untouched by tears might approximate
the lift & sway of palm trees
rocked by waves of nightshade turquoise
shattering the glass pages of a narcotic hymnal
you thought you knew by heart

Seismic Shift

An ounce of perfume in $300 shoes
Her swan song’s a real rocker

My heart, my beach, my wave, my
aimlessness
beneath the pinwheel sun
(Chumash petroglyph)

              sand castle rotting seaweed sun swarm
              tentacle
                              clawfoot foam debris
              salt mist breath
              hush
                                                open & shut
              A biblical haiku in an underwater theme park
              & the god whose death he died

left coast
last coast                     a stillborn radiance
lost coast                     folded into the
                                        irrevocable haze

To reconcile the distance & the time it takes

Shredding the opulent ocean air
she indicates the measure
of tide, of time, & the steps
that take you there & back again

riding in on her half-shell surfboard
a sea nymph I guess
                              she licks her green lips
              with a silver tongue
                                                as a million sunsets ripple in her eyes
lovingly soaked in gasoline

              I still have the photograph
& the scars
                              & the silkscreened cover art
in full color
              even black & white
                              with delicate rainshadow beadwork
so customized
                              except for the ritual
string of pearls

& the long tunnel out

Fluid Tidal Tendencies

This one’s for the
bottle blonde with the suicide eyes
like what’s left when you drain the pool

bought out by Hollywood & Standard Oil
although the entire coastline still resembles
a Tijuana version of Chinatown

Will it still be here after eternity?
A man can play it that way for as long as
he can still unfold a map

or paddle out into the glassy
                              mid-tide sewage effluent
after a 3-day nocturne
              littered with the leftovers
of some half-assed satanic
                              barbeque on the beach

assumes he can pick & choose his demons

Pale turquoise in the shallows gets
darker the farther out you go

Fro-Zen Pipes

Caught beneath a late Mexican sun
I should be halfway to some ecsatic
break in the action

blossoming like a bloody nose

              How long before your chosen mirror
              reflects that tender urgency
              & reluctance
                              where smoke meets desire
                              if only from her pale insistence
who whispers in a cardiovascular language
the kind of thing you hear only when you’re not
listening
              & any other voice responding
spoken, unspoken
                              hell, I don’t know

There’s something there that will never change

precariously altered by the telling