PLEASE HELP BLUE PRESS STAY AFLOAT

Sunday, September 23, 2012

Variable High Cloudiness

I get the news from the
beach sand that settles into cracks
in the pavement

            the wind leaning against the seawall
                                    a cascade of nasturtiums
                        falling thru smashed windows in the ocean’s rush

The midnight sun at noon
is shimmering in snake games on the sidewalk
& you can see your reflection in the
silver-green ripple sound of eucalyptus

(you & I
thinking this)

It has to do with balance
the inner ear listening to something else entirely

thunder folded into foam

             emerald & chrome

raw strands of burnt kelp
            methadone inside your underwater ballet

& this is where your heart knocks to break
as if it was me tapping at the glass

Saturday, September 22, 2012

I'm in training

A banana & bacon sandwich for breakfast
A carne asada burrito from the taco wagon at lunch
9 bottles of beer & 13 cigarettes, por favor
A point break, smooth and glassy
The poems of Catullus

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Now You See It, Now You Don’t

Fog & sun, alternating
a deep white blue haze
incandescent, translucent
an orchid made of galvanized steel
& beach glass
offered to Our Lady of the Vanishing Point
morning glory
Miles Davis
at Malibu
circa 1957
in the wayback machine

bleached waves wash
across the drumroll sand

& I'm watching spiderwebs bend at 4:32 PM

God pointing to his watch

popping bubbles with a feather

Sunday, September 16, 2012

Half a Dime

Between the pavement & the ocean sky
              just steps from where the coast
                              road cuts its sectioned asphalt bleached
by the sun & fogs & vibroned tire treads
              of who knows how many cars and trucks
                              careening into the mist
we parked & stumbled to find a steep
              crooked sandy trail
                                                down from panoramic cliffs

              intervals of rusty eucalyptus
                              gargling the seabreeze
                                                                like a flooded carburetor

                              A neat pile of regurgitated fishbones
                              in the center of the path
                              like a nest of crystals in the sun

Another time I lost my sunglasses here

                                                inside mineshafts of raw pacific steel

                              between the spanking cold & the damp

so that I had to blink to remember my name
& offshore breezes whispered so deciduously into the vast
unobserved platitude of ocean haze
something that was indicated or that could only be read upon the rusted dashboard dials of a derelict Buick
rotting & sunken
decapitated in a ragged seaside vacant lot
adjacent to the tideflat
as in ancient crime scene photographs where detectives stand
& a uniformed patrolman points
the lurid implication of what lies hidden in the weeds

              but in the sand gravel parking lot
              where the pavement gleams wetly out of the past
              seems set like a jewel in the last stretch of land before
              the heaving Pacific
                                                swept in red sunset turquoise
              drizzled in the milk of alleyways purpled w/blood or mist
                              swamped in a brown corner by Rembrandt
              with simple manifestations of allegorical contingencies
                                                trembling like a drop of dew in anticipation
              maybe Golgothas & la luz de Oriente
                              flying in off the lip of the Pacific
              night & day crashing the sunburned sidewalk
              the sky rocking back on its heels

                              between the dancer & the dance

              waiting for the tide to wrap in around the jetty

                              drifting
                                                                half your life at least
                                                the half you can still remember

              & it was like silk or aluminum out there
at that depth & from the rolling surface tension lifted
shallow roses & a deeper gloom than all your Topangas
                              shrouded in smoke & mist of Aztec or
                                                Abyssinian origin but with hula girls
tragic on a sand road in the lemon dusk
              vacant & inexcusable except for the
                                                way their hips move & the rustling of
                              grass skirts like the rainy cape of pneumatic
                              kelp groves rocking underwater to the
                                                                swoop & dazzle of ocean tides
              counting one-1,000 / two-1,000 / three--
              until you get there
              the sum total of the ground upon which you stagger
              & the bubbling under

Thursday, September 13, 2012

Drawn Blank

For Pope Benedict XI & Bill Berkson

A seagull wheels & pivots in the sky
describing the arc of a compass

a prayer-wheel windchime
racking up the zeroes

a roundelay

a self-devouring hula hoop
                                                rolling downhill

I don’t know, Bill, what else?

                              a bubble in a mile of milk?

something concentric like Kandinsky
singing
                              doo-wah-ditty-dum
ditty-doom

& standing outside the Del Taco in Ventura
on Chinese New Year
                                                                in the rain
Giotto dips his brush in red
paint
                                                & in one continuous stroke
                              draws a perfect circle

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Flooded w/Mirrors

to Jim Carroll

When that sheer
              nylon mist drifts
in & wraps itself
                              around the sun
              like a tourniquet
                                          pulled tight
                              the blue vein swells
& the red blooms
              in the glass
                              drawing up the
night just
              one more time

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Treading Water

The mist is shifting down now the
sidewalk is wet & the air tastes like
seawater
              because that’s really what it is
what we are

damp & shimmering

in the first light

Monday, September 10, 2012

One Night in San Francisco


Donald Guravich, Kevin Opstedal, Lewis MacAdams, Joanne Kyger
September 8, 2012, at the Unitarian Center in San Francisco

Thursday, September 6, 2012

Five Will Get You Ten

Out of the sea (I must have dreamed
this)
              & the flash as you tumble through
              demonic changes
                              (we must be exact)
Someone asks and someone else
answers
              footsteps in the dark at
              5:47 AM
                              & I won’t pretend to know
                              anything more than that

fill in the blanks later

              There’s more apparently where that
came from
                              where it went

landing smack-dab in the middle of your own reflection

& way up here the ocean path leading down thru broken
sea shells, yellow weeds, the rattling dead thistle

everything wet, trembling

waiting for you to make the next move