PLEASE HELP BLUE PRESS STAY AFLOAT

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

You could make a Bible movie out of this

I carried my surfboard across a bridge
(it was actually a pier
              extending far out into the ocean
the wood was very old & sections had petrified
                              into a deeply veined off-white stone
              resembling perhaps marble?)

a steep incline drenched in corrugated
              steel on the flipside of a delta slide version of
I Wanna Be Your Dog
                              with subsidiary barking harmonicas
              & tide charts in the upper register

a real heartbreaker

beneath the ripple patterns & regret
              tombstoned in the palomino sand

The tide washes over making it (the sand) darker
                              as though in shadow she said
beneath a swarm of gulls swirling
              in the heavy sky over Ocean Street

Sunday, March 27, 2011

The first classic beach barbeque was the cremation of Shelley

Mayan temple basilica (classical Roman, in
              Sanskrit) a CATHEDRAL (Hawaiian gothic)
submerged just beyond the reef
                                                (its feathers are silver
                              rippling in a pool of stained glass)
a pagoda, a pavillion, a palisades
              bronze door balustrade cistern
(part of the concrete seawall had broken, crumbled, rotted
away exposing rusty twisted rebar bones
                              jutting from its gray carcass
              as if a chunk of raincloud
                                                                ritually stained
(prehistoric neon tubing exposed
                              where the Aztec pornstar descends
her feet barely touching the ground
fuck shit piss dance

Friday, March 25, 2011

It melts in your brain not in your hand

The puzzle pieces are all
right where you left them
try to remember the connection
seahorse   /   hippocampus
“indulgent & huge”
I forget why exactly…
an apparition             green, translucent
but pouring water was I still just a memory?
How was I to know?   The
dragon in the waves breathing fire & great plumes
of mist in the Manchurian surf almanac
on the shelf
next to Hawaiian Mythology & an empty
tequila bottle (Cabrito Reposado)
The sky’s overcast
velvet, or cement
the air is moving left to right
sea lions had wings once

Thursday, March 24, 2011

If I wrote this in Tijuana 20 years ago would I remember

Navigate long dark hallyway of monastic 15th century
labyrinth
              I’m looking for the alcove where they
keep the vending machines
There are various pelicans & cormorants in dark
robes assembled speaking to one another in hushed tones
as though sifting through reflections in a broken mirror
I lean out over the stone window ledge gazing down upon
the ocean
                              all tangled in conflicting tides all wrong
the waves all broken all gray-blue green
                                                with foam folded into every corner
(but then I may have been looking at the sky)
              The wind kicks up it’s cold this is the day I died
an eye-of-pelican sky glimmering above

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Do the Iguana

Move the window slightly left of the palm tree

rain         rain         rain         rain         rain

the rain has it’s own agenda (wind)

A quart of Corona Familiar to keep me warm
dark bronze glass against the dark gray sky

drizzle music

I have mailed off the last of the severed fingers
more rain falls there are blue sparks behind my eyes
my left knee creaks like a coffin lid

the window has it’s own agenda (rain)
palm tree swaying in the wind
this doesn’t explain anything I hope

piano in the mud (strings rusted an octave higher

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Swamp Cooler

I keep returning to the same high cliff
keep diving off it into the churning water
& keep surviving
bobbing like a cork on the surface
last night or the night before
playing a game of cribbage with Thomas Chatterton
way up in a lighthouse with the end of the world crashing
around outside
(it’s dark in there but I’ll keep my shades on thanks)
nameless
                              sin nombre
                                                              we seldom cast a shadow
squalor is perhaps the more accurate description
carved stone inlay
marble, onyx, travertine, granite
some kind of composite
sand, water, seaweed
certain flowers made of bronze
plum tree grows upsidedown in rainpuddle
all its alabaster blossoms having fallen
shattering on the ground which is the sky
crushed with clouds

Saturday, March 19, 2011

Lulled into degrees of difficulty

Vera Cruz means “True Cross”
Santa Cruz is “Holy Cross”

The Royal Road, El Camino Real
600 miles long

El Pueblo de Nuestra SeƱora la Reina de los Angeles
(that’s L.A. to you)

but that place that no longer exists
although the name remains the same & the freeways
just as gridlocked

Oh
f   a   d   i   n   g
                              Byzantine confluence

a light scribble             flesh & bone & concrete

Where’d all this rain come from?
                                                                north & south

                              bajo de las olas

              Balboa, Big Sur, Bolinas
              bubbles
                                                rattling
far out at sea

Friday, March 18, 2011

Eggs & Bones

Our Lady of Guadalupe Maitreya Avalokitesvara Batman & Famous Monsters “make the sky roll up like a hide” says the Veda half in shade half in sun & the other half where it’s raining applause in the eucalyptus the shorebreak rumble beneath the breath of sea breeze tumult in a bottle cap whiff of death rot on the beach sun tan lotion rust & eternity drums in the sand the ink needle tracing sunset nobody saw me is it cold in here questions the answer you have no idea how difficult it was to restrain myself at that moment & after I walked back from the beach in the Latin translation having shifted several inches north remember how warm the pavement was

Thursday, March 17, 2011

Tar Beach

Fitful swampage of messy clouds you
              possibly walk thru on your way?
rain, radiation, Pacific currents
“Thus did I assume the vestments”
                                                (air, water, fire)

                              their flowers kiss death
              on the eyelids
                                                swamped with tears

You were part of a plan
                              (spring, summer, fall)
that place you can go to
                                                or return from

“I bring you greetings from the islands―
Hawaii, Oahu, Kauai, Molokai, California, Africa”

just follow these damp footsteps
              (wings too heavy to be of much use)

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Too Heavy To Be Lifted

A blank sky
                                tongues of flame dropping in
all Pentecostal
                                                & in your eyes
              a postcard sunset dipped in gasoline

but there are variegated flames in the ocean as well
& beneath it
                              among the cloud machines
                                                                      wave machines
& the machines that generate impossible neon plumes
of sunset haze
                              to hide inside of

shadows nailed to the sand

              pelican flies slightly behind
                                                his own shadow on the wave
                                                            solid set in stone for a split
second
                              a psychosomatic bait & switch
                                                Mexican standoff situation
surfacing in the eucalyptus kelp grove
              all drizzled in silver green fishscale auras
                              mermaid lip gloss, toe nail polish
“garlands of sea blossoms in her hair”
oil slick beach glass rotting styrofoam 1,000 years

Sunday, March 13, 2011

Vision of the Sermon (Jacob Wrestling w/the Angel)

I think I have achieved a great simplicity, rustic and superstitious.
                                                                              ―Paul Gauguin

You sink a little deeper
                                                lighting matches
underwater
                              as palm trees tumble in the wind…

              Other times, other places
                                                memories, feelings
                              too heavy to be lifted

like the shadow of a seagull
                                                haunting the inaccurate thrift store
              of my personality―
                                                                a seashell echo,
                                                                                a rusted finger of coral,
the beach at Waikiki
                                                in braille…

& the moon is a rock at the bottom of a tidepool
                              shimmering with reflected light

Saturday, March 12, 2011

High Pressure Liquid Chromatography

Sun illuminates
translucent pear
blossoms

              invisible spirits or demons
                                                      falling thru nets of flame

                              The Fall of the Roman Empire

& a bottle of beer
                                                      (Negra Modelo)
              at the moment
                              looking backwards

              Rome built & dismantled
              overnight

Friday, March 11, 2011

Slip & Slide

Nowhere Friday with
blank shorebreak foam
& a tsunami warning (waves
bouncing off the devastion in
Japan surging towards us
500 miles an hour
                                                but that’s a
long way to travel & it’s a
tsunami ripple surge when it gets
here knocking boats around in the
harbor capsizing a few
              beneath the lemonade sun
inundated with apocalyptic rumors
as one might kickflip a chunk of concrete
& land like Cortez
on the shores of Montezuma
(another righteous dope fiend who ain’t never
coming home
                                                bottoming out in the
Pacific sludge
                              the tide will get high in a couple of
hours
              but I’m slightly below that now

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Nitrous Peroxide

Walking downhill backwards
                              the sun felt good on my
              shoulders
                                                in the dyslexic translation
                              from neon to Latin
tilting towards the ocean here in
              California spelled with a “K”
                                                                like “katatonic”
                                                as if to whisper
                              “I’m a bowl of excitement,
                              bitch”
& a single plum blossom
                                                crashes
                              to the ground
in the biblical haiku
              you’ve got tattooed on your hip…
I prefer a milkfed steel
                                                tidewater canto
                                                                at sunset
                              & an unobstructed view

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Reaction Time

              Blinking in the slow dark
lifting now
                              as clouds rearrange themselves
in anticipation of
              the next million dollar idea
falling through the emptiness
                              blue, green, dark or not at all
reciting the 23rd Psalm (the
cantilever section)
                                                & the palm trees join in
whispering like distant rain

Monday, March 7, 2011

Every Single Song

Waking slowly
disoriented
but calm
              whatever these imaginary qualities possess
propensities
                              too many levels of reality to scroll through
never enough

              The eastern sky lit up with the death of winter

& paved with clouds

              like a parking lot I remember near the beach
                                                                              in Playa del Rey
                                                a million years ago

Sunday, March 6, 2011

A controlled habit

Tipping back the flamingo bottle
lit from the inside
&#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 knowing all the while that
&#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 death is out there
&#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 welding pink shadows to laundromats

It’s not about what you have but
what you’ve lost

&#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 & the sun sliding down the silk sleeve
of a sky the color of boiling kool-aid
&#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 just now starting to dissolving into
blue blue nadas

&#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 The ocean breeze competing w/the
traffic on Hwy 1 for our
&#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 eternally divided attention
as we knock down the auguries of innocence in rusty tidepool
sessions
&#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 &#160 with blonde on blonde enameling

Saturday, March 5, 2011

Pitching the empties into the abyss

A future self revisiting a past self,
                                                that was me, once
but paddling back & forth across the River Mitsuse
back & forth, in Japanese…
                              I woke up hungry
it was still dark & rain was falling against the window
glass
--------------------------------------------------
A Brit who publishes a beatnik fan zine wanted to reprint an
excerpt from my Bolinas history.   I said okay.   That was like
a year ago.   I heard that he published the magazine with my
work in it & so I asked if I could get a copy.   Turns out he had
already sent it to my old address & it was returned to him.   He said
he could re-send it to my current address if I paid for postage.  
I don’t have any money, so I never got to see the thing.   Maybe
if I was Gary Snyder or Mike McClure or Ginsberg’s old shoes he
would have fallen over himself to get me a copy?
--------------------------------------------------
Lovely Doubloons in the mail today
                              poems by Sunnylyn, collages by Micah
              Mardi Gras 2011

Blossoms opening on the Asian pear tree
                                                                big plate of carnitas for dinner
              bottles of Victoria from Cerveceria Modelo

A break in the rain

                              I make a list & throw it away
                                                write letters I’ll never send

& the moon seems heavier than before
              pulling down the night

Friday, March 4, 2011

World at Large by Donald Guravich


It is with enormous pleasure I announce the publication of World at Large: Selected Poems 1971-1978 by Donald Guravich.   This is Donald’s first book since Blue Chips, a collection of his brilliant short prose pieces which was published in 2003, also by Blue Press.

The poems in World at Large range from Canadian backwoods snow flurry epiphanies, small town political union hall & strip mall generosity (with telepathic details carefully measured), to red dust Mexican incantations, all with clear-eyed lyric precision.

          World at large
                        gets larger         Door opens
                                  so large it disappears

A beautiful collection, augmented with elegant line drawings by the poet, World at Large is published in a limited edition of only 175 copies.   Get one while you can from Blue Press.

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Standing on the Nose in a Stylish Manner

                              The disembodied tango just
steps from the beach
              sunlight folded into a corner of the
inverted swimming pool
                                                above

                              Yeah, this is the drop edge of the world alright
                                                                you can dive off if you want

The soundtrack propelled by a psychedelic oom-pah
              punk mariachi band
but ethereal enough
                                                to keep your sunglasses on all night

                              litanies resigned
              to nickle & dime aloha bells
                                                otherwise delicately confused

You can shrug your hips
                              at passionate accidents
              aesthetically arranged
                                                beneath an off-brand palm tree stigmata

& every card you’re dealt
                              is the blank of hearts