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