Los Oxidados

Shooting pool in a dirt floor cantina

“Mucho calor”             yeah, weather’s hot, amigo

Dogs wandering in & out of the place

          (they have a little Baja all their own)

 
Back in the car we take off with the windows rolled down
so that the heat off the blacktop can blast through us
 
Are those band-aids on the crushed bumper of that ’84
Chevy compact?
 
It rattles & spews dark clouds of smoke

                              into the deep blue Mexican air

 
Mariachis taking a break at the Tecate Six in Pescadero

Federales hanging out at the corner

 
Turn left off the highway onto a dirt road

bounce along through agricultural land

peppers, avocados                palm trees

                                    veer right at the thrashed VW van

& roll on out to the beach . . .

 
Standing in the shorebreak                intense undertow but

                                                               the waves are clean

We are as the haze

              ignited by the setting sun

Shelley must have lived like this on the Mediterranean

only the waves weren’t as good

 

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This was one of many poems written during

a trip to Baja in 2006.  I think I should change
my name to Kevin Oxidados.

A short, very dark film by Derek Dunfee

Juan Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

The birth of oceans exposed by winter

   breathing the tropical ambience on Beach Street

A day of hollow music & indecision

   inside the windy ruins of our

once & future resolve (Mexico)

   although the swaying palm trees up the ante

with their preconceived notion of fate

   Our dreams hanging like heretics

from the high-tension wires

   & a not-so-simple walk to the liquor store

sets the skate wheels in my head to spinning
   It’s dark in there but I’m feeling like a flashlight

on a moonless night

   the power gone & the rain

sweeping in from the south

Universal Remote

I swung around past the breakwater
but I lost my footing
as one rush bled into another
& I was sure I’d reach you

            the way the vanity of storms at sunset

                                    reach for the pulse of the tide

                        when the pavement dives

                                                beneath the sand

& all I can offer you is the blurry neon
outside the taqueria

                                    the evening mist

                        settling in for the long haul

your errant passion my autographed copy
of the sky over El Segundo

            & palm trees anchored in the fog

                                    like shadows that scratch your name into

                        smoked glass rippling just beyond the point

the feathered breeze falling over damp colors

            the strings tuned according to some obscure

theory of harmony as your eyelids cultivate
a moonlit emotion

                                    like the sound of waves

in a eucalyptus grove
20 miles from here

365-Day Weekend

One flawless wave
One seagull carving into the wind
One name to sign along the
dotted line of the horizon
already obscured by haze & silver mist
 
a forgery exacting a price that must be paid
for what I have become
 
then as now the instant & eventual distance
to dissolve like silk or iron in the fists of dark eyed children
 
the moist pavement breathing
 
& 400 miles later a black tar reckoning
on the pier at high noon
with Our Lady of Fatima
& the last stone plugged into the altar
sealed with postage stamps painted with pilot whales
to commemorate the surgical precision of waves
 
My heart is an underwater bowling alley
spraypainted with Paleozoic graffiti
to explain why the ocean is wet
because “mourning becomes electrum”
& the future can be read in the compression dings
on my surfboard
even when it isn’t raining
 
The seaweed blossoms

            woven into the green hair of sea nymphs

                        who dream of one-way tickets to

                        Hollywood or Tupelo

are like ransom notes
that got lost in the mail

Blood Alcohol

A jagged piece of broken glass
left on the beach for the sky to find
like music piped into a hall of mirrors
The watery gate swinging wide open
the rainy bonsai palm trees
the light the air as yet unbruised
was silver sometimes was emerald
but from torn canvas spilling rust
revealed to us the numbers of the heart
arranged as if by chance & so we strike
another match & pour the amber slow
because it is the only dance that you
& I will ever know

One Gun is All You Need

The slow petals of the blood lily
unfolding
inside the sound of gears grinding
a block from the beach
 
This is winter time on the coast
 
I remember walking into a brick wall of rain
in the living room
 
& she was there with her darkwater pearls
& Mexican silver
her eyes like shattered glass
folded into sand swept by foam
 
Iron pipes breaking across the reef signaled
that the wind had shifted & I realized
that the veins
on the backs of my hands
resembled a road map of Los Angeles
 
so I knew then that I’d never be lost

Return of the Creature

Amazing Grace, where is thy sting
I wasn’t talking to her
I was talking to the
avenging angel
tattooed on her ankle
 
STEEPED IN RUIN & CANDLELIGHT
I said I’d prefer a milkfed steel
tidewater canto
at sunset
& an unobstructed view
 
REALITY DISTORTION FIELD
It was more like snorting meth
w/Jacques Cousteau
than reciting Sailing to Byzantium
backwards
 
UNFINISHED BUSINESS
The Tibetan monk you resembled
in profile only
had a crowbar up his sleeve
which is just the thing when your
eyes snap like a rubber band
& the shadow of your heart
wrapped in tinfoil
discovers a new use for gravity
 
Los Lavalamps
Reinventing the light as it would
seaward reflect
the walls of a tidepool clock
 
HIGH SEAS DRIFTER
Explanations are
almost always a disappointment
 
LONG TRIP OUT
You occupy a shadow
the rain gathering above the beach
That you were there at all
should have been enough
 
A BEND IN THE HAZE
Dreamed of Joanne & Donald
walking in Oaxaca
beneath a sky scorched by
turquoise flames
 
DARKER THAN YOU
The light is endless but it doesn’t have anything
to do with us
wherever we walk
holding up our end of Eternity
“Not to be sold east of the San Andreas Fault”
 
AFTER THE GOLD RUSH
Walking back across the sand
leaving no footprints or trace
that I’d ever been there at all 
 
Sultans of Swing
Whatever drowned indulgence resigns
the threat of remembering
obvious intentions
the beach road humming like a wire
exhausted all lingering regret
 
I can only return to the
wavy depths that I never
left in the first place
while those I used to know

& whose company I carried

concede the rhyme

in some other world

too far from mine

with words I might have heard

some other time