Standing Waves

Tesla perceived the earth as a conductor of
acoustical resonance

A tremble of presence which doesn’t register
“where smoke’s unrivaled azure spirals”

vibration/alignment/balance

& the tendency of a system to oscillate
at a greater amplitude at some frequencies
than at others
                              which I don’t understand
except for the vowel sounds
or the way someone said it as though thinking of
something else entirely

“So seven oceans answer from their dream”

but all I could hear was a bootleg acoustic version of
Louie-Louie

Speed

Sam the Monkey

This clipping was pasted into one of my old notebooks (from sometime in the the mid-80's).   I don't know who wrote it & can't remember what publication I clipped it from.

As much a part of this world as the next

NEAR MYTH
The all night girls
out on the mainline
muttering the lyrics
What are they nymphs?

TEXT
“at Ankor Wat
a Hindu myth carved in stone
shows a tug of war
between gods & demons
w/a serpent as a rope. A sea of
milk is
churned by this action
& voluptuous women
called apsaras
take flight from the
froth like
bubbles
from champagne”

THE CLASSICS
One thing’s for sure those
naiads & water sprites
lounginig at poolside
will dive into their shadows
one day
& never resurface (although
the cinematic flutter
of their eyelids will
linger

The Raymond Chandler Variations

for Donald Guravich

I went zooming out
over a dark sea
& exploded in a sheet of flame.

It is like a sudden scream
in the night
but there is no sound.

There would be a bright
moon later
but it hadn’t checked in yet.

In Elementary Music The Relation Of Earth To The Sphere of Water Is 4 to 3

FROM MARS
There are times I want to
sink my teeth in that red pavement
& play frisbee with flying saucers
that whirl around the rusty skies
like little halos
or maybe they’re just hubcaps
stolen off some cosmic limo
cruising the interplanetary highway
The little green chauffer wears dark
junky shades he’s cool
I hike out to the canals
where silver gondolas slip like
needles thru rippling red felt
sewing a seam in the tide
It is a red tide         turning purple
sewn with golden thread

ORION
The pain lifts you
via some invisible
hydraulics
right up thru the
ceiling into the
stars
              which are brilliant
              clusters of
              razorblades
              spinning wildly
You do your
Joe Cocker imitation
there
between Sirius
& Aldebaran

THE SEELIGER EFFECT
Sky painted windows dark
uniform effect of trees
thatched shadows

zap vibrations filtered in through
crushed polaroids

Night’s thin membrane stretched
& glistening like
& shut

permeated w/death-defying dreams

Let’s ride then
to the edge

& tiptoe thru arctic tranquilities

Being

These daily ontological funnies
drive home their irrefutable punchlines
rack of enchantments
ceremonies of fire & ice
the distant clangor
cracked bells
& suddenly
like Swee’Pea on steroids
a tremendous surge
of meaning
staggers into the room
& falls flat on its face

A condition
known in metaphysics as
“being”

Eating Dinner with an Old Farmer Not Long After the Death of His Wife

Each of us
not saying the
obvious

that each of us knows
what we cannot speak
out loud

The death of his wife
is told somewhere
between the words

in the empty house
in the food we share
in the garden not planted
this year

The Cremation of Shelley

(from Trelawny)

More wine was poured over
Shelley’s dead body
than he had consumed
during his life. This
w/the oil & salt made
the yellow flames glisten
& quiver.

The corpse fell open
& the heart was laid bare.

The frontal bone of the
skull fell off
and, as the back of the skull rested
on the red-hot bottom bars
of the furnace, the
brains literally seethed,
bubbled and boiled
as in a cauldron,
for a very long time.

From entire white Fridays & turquoise lit palm trees carving your name in rust falling into the arms of photographs

Land’s End―
                              Times
                                  End
and then
              (Charles Olson)

The rocks stretched having come this far
the tide
as it breaks
drawn toward that (silver)
rendered the Ocean
a ring of steel

Meet Me At The Bottom

“The tide was high and the breakers loomed up marble black
and fell white out of oceanic darkness.”   ―Ross Macdonald

Your heart strung with
silver drizzle
like a religious vow
deeply blue, or green
with Mr. Octopus & the god of Kung Fu
duking it out while hosannas & Freight Train Blues
& plaintive doo-wop refrains
ignite the tide…

feels like the End of Days
looming at 2 in the morning
& I can’t sleep

“so now we see what the darkness will bring”

your so-called soul looking for flashlight batteries
& bottles of beer full of airplane glue & staggering
to the barefoot check-out line

with dancing skeletons leading the way

The Phone is Ringing

for Joanne

Everyone deserves to be a bodhisattava
if only for one day

(a soliloquy for at least 7 voices)

perhaps she meant you need to
learn to become a great ventriloquist
like Saint Augustine?

meanwhile missing the evening of slack key guitar at Pt. Reyes
due to television or immigrant authority or
elbows at the Food Bank

I suppose we should opt for a bag of rice
& some seaweed?

You might feel bad but you won’t starve

The “burden of opportunity” has a certain charm but
I’m not sure that it’s the truth

These things must be sorted out

so many sand pebbles to choose from
agate, quartz, jade, glass, wood, iron, bone,
styrofoam—

I’ll take the one shaped exactly like my life

Let me know when you’ve found it

If Montana Had An Ocean

Ornamental pavilions of rust
consecrate the eucalyptus
rattling in the wind
above the sledgehammer surf
& the sun mixes it up with the ocean
so that a drowsy numbness seeps in thru the haze
at 3:36pm           swimming in serotonin
& so I am schooled in logic
& blue movies           at low tide
as performed by Earl Scruggs & the Fantastic Baggys
although the blonde sky nods out
during the cantilever section
as holy & blank El Dorado
handing down Neptune’s shoes
so you no longer need to remember
the way the pavement laid down at your feet
someone had folded it up & put it away
but I swear I can still feel the way the shadows fell
reincarnated from a ’64 Chevy
& there are photographs
& the last time she was standing by the window
I had one lung in a watery grave
& all the missing pages from the tidebook

Westside

Confessions of an English Opium Eater
The Sutra of Hui Neng
The Book of Nods
Scenes of Life at the Capital

Ono No Komachi
Joanne Kyger

Art Pepper & the Hollywood All Stars

Thomas Pynchon
Thomas Pynchon

“Ladies & gentlemen—
from Los Angeles, California
The Doors…”

A ripple on the surface of the Gulf of Alaska
travels 1000 miles of open ocean to
crash as a 20 foot wave at Santa Cruz

Dear Pamela           we know who we are

Sand in the Grooves

It Feels Like Nowhere
A little recombinant DNA & a coke please
Costa Azul           Pacific Gas & Electric
Infinite space rattles between my ears
I have a name & a number but no money
& I often think tacos & beer at dawn

Going Coastal
A northwest swell brings waist to head high surf
during the more favorable tides
Then the wind shifts & the mind goes blank
like a made-for-TV movie

27 Shades of Kool-Aid
I often think silver & steel, chrome & velvet, the
vaulted cathedral architecture beneath the pier
at half past sunset as the fog steps down
deeper than did ever plummet sound

Working Title

I swear I could see the flickering candlelight
of an underwater Mexican voodoo shrine
in the eyes of the girl with the dolphin tattoo
                              & it felt like a flawless 180 off the lip
north of the jetty with 20 tons of silk
                                                to add & subtract from
                              edging closer by the minute

& there’s a cold breeze that
                              climbs up over the seawall
              & rattles around in the beach eucalyptus
which makes me think of the nymph, Calypso
                                                whose symbol is a dolphin…

Blue sky,
              cracked pavement,
                                                as at Delphi or
Hermosa Beach
              with the sun humming like a refrigerator
doused in gasoline

Rituals (after Rimbaud)

To Our Lady of Wet Sand
                              resolute, inviolate
              a garland of seaweed in her hair
―For the damp souls of the drowned

To Sister Yolanda Pipeline
              resigned to dice games
                              in the heart’s house
―For children consumed by fever

To Mustang Sally
                              in her bikini of corrugated steel
the awkward flutter of her eyelashes
              makes a sound like wind
rustling through a field of grass skirts
―For the unforgiven

To the revolutionary cadres of Balboa, Malibu & Rincon

To the benediction of the tides
                                                annointed by salt spray & foam
              ceremonies of beach concrete
                              w/a late summer sun tilting back in the sky
a tangle of shadows & stuttering neon script
―For those who have yet to lose their way

Simple descriptions of landscapes
seascapes         parked beneath halos
                                                (the saltwater sacrifice implied)
to ride the pulse back & down
                              the surging wall of night
              where you step         turn         & dissolve

Fool’s Day

Reserachers suspect some questionable
hanky-panky in the intertidal zone…

I’m not so sure but that rain falls

& I’m looking at a portrait of Johann Sebastian Bach
on the cover of a CD
              he looks like a member of Metallica
                              in their glory years

Yeah, well my glory years have passed as well

& the storm surge crushes the point
              as I note on my habitual drive-by
Victory at Sea conditions prevail
                              with 20-plus foot waves
              folding thunder in gray-white foam

& I just sat there gazing out into the
primoridial mist while
parked beneath a palm tree that rattled
like a sick whore
in the rain