Skipping a stone across the River of Forgetfulness

Anslem Hollo, 1934-2013
 
I am slapped upside gutwrenching zeal
& epiphanies
as the sincere numbers of the heart
measure not abstraction merely but
blood & knuckles
yet with the altered light falling in thru the screen door
with the sad news about Anselm
making every shadow that much heavier
as I remember the depth of his laughter
as though gargled deep within a well of souls

The Weight

salt cold         sea roads
oil slick
a thin feather of cloud
that seems to have fishbones in it

 

            I was swept away by the blue sparkle

            where I learned to surf by candlelight

            snap decisions broken in half by a misjudged floater

                        on the wrong side of the jetty

 
folded into the waves                it’s that easy
 
rainsqualls              in the back of my head
 
throbbing engines                adrift                    hovering
 
tracing your family history back to gray whales
& the scene of the crime (Malibu) a blank space
you can return to although you can never go back

            the coast road crumbling beneath yr wheels

                        the palm trees & ice plant & carbon monoxide

            settling in for the long haul now pelicans in formation

                                    plow their way thru the redolent haze

 
& what do we do now? you ask & I answer
We wait

Burnt orange & compensatory

She was standing naked at the window
next to a small Pembroke table
upon which sat my keys & my wallet & a candle
unlit

            because it was midday & the sun blasted intense

light down from a sky that was impossibly
high & blue

                        & all I could see was her silhouette

as if cut from a book on the Black Arts
if you need me to say it

            sharing a seaweed cigarette there is

sand in the bed & beach tar on the soles of our feet

                        music drifting in from the other room

Patti Smith or Mingus

                                    I couldn’t say for sure

there were damp shadows in my ear
& the Coleridge I read that morning I found it to be
instructive

                    like the punctuation marks I chose to ignore

in my copy of the Tao Te Ching

            which I forgot to mention was casually placed

on the table between my wallet & the candle “This is a
still life” she said & I thought yes, this is still
life

            or at the very least a 60/40 split

Out to Lunch

The phone rings & there’s no one here to answer it

I shave while gazing into an empty mirror

No questions are asked & no answers are offered

 
I was reading Ovid
trans. Rolfe Humphries
every blank page
Indiana University Press, copyright 1955
renewed in 1983, All rights reserved
 
bubbling up from cracked pavements
 
& rattling around inside the faded colors
of an old instamatic snapshot of me & my sisters
standing next to a two-tone 1962 Ford Mercury
in the driveway at 1211 Venice Blvd
when I was maybe six or seven (Les Poètes de sept ans)
cursing softly under my breath
my hair red like the rust that never sleeps
“The Poems” already bubbling up from the
cracked pavement
 
I would take you there
but it is an address that no longer exists
& who knows what ever happened to that car
 
embalmed in yellowgold light

Risk Factors

We can look up into the clear
sky       it’s pearl-colored though not as
mysterious as it should be
this time of day
photographed by Robert Frank
 
The unexperienced streets
seem somehow lighter than the
concrete and asphalt they’re made of
& there should be a wind but
there isn’t
 
The steam-driven sunset is waiting
to go to work on you
with a samurai sword & a road flare
 
(I suspect that only makes sense
west of the PCH)
 
The foam that washes across the sand seems
lit from the inside         just like you
maintaining radio silence as you check to see
how much is left
 
like fainting Desdemona of the Andes
wading through the seaweed
 
& maybe the mist parts like a beaded curtain
 
& nothing is revealed

Name that Tune

Suppose I let you see my dark side
for only a minute
the boy I was & the man I’m pretending to be
cradled by the drizzle tide like Saigons of
parkinglot disdain & lamentation
in saecula saeculorum / Forever (& ever)

hoisting the amphetamine pez dispenser

in silhouette against the green concrete

                        to be set alongside the rectangular blue

slab I suppose represents either the ocean
or the sky

            a thin red line diagonal to a scribble of turquoise

& what could be a disemboweled Buick

                        sedan bleeding rust onto the pink stucco wall

            of a one bedroom rental just steps from the beach

 
The girl I met there
            how was I to know that she would be someone who
looked like you?  whispering like a mist of rain
across the midnight pavement

Zorba's Last Wave

The moon is full but hidden
behind a mass of rain clouds

            a gift from a storm system that

            was born in the north Pacific

                        & traveled across many miles of

                        open water

just to pelt the sliding glass door
as hindu windchimes
carefully ennunciate every syllable

                        the salt spray the stuttering neon

archives

            & the slow fade

bending harmonicas in the dark concert hall
of the heart

            to be buried beneath the waves

                        3 miles from the Venice pier

 
Guitars slashed by wind & rain the mariachi version

            heavy slow rustling of palm leaves

the bead curtains & smoke rings stashed in the trunk

                        of a stolen El Dorado

 
as if you were born the day I died
 
I leave you the bad habits of my father

            along with several that were all my own

wearing dark glasses at the dinner table

                        but it was only to hide the tears I

couldn’t explain even if I wanted to

It's Only a Movie

The soft grainy shadows flicker-
ing above & within a slice of
inverted glass (my
heart)

            the light the haze filters

like falsified documents
 
& on the beach I’m keeping count
of each wave

                        measuring intervals & calculating

wind direction & velocity

            intuitively stumbling from sand to

concrete my god how many times
 
wiping the rain from my drugstore RayBans
like Rimbaud at Punta Baja

            or maybe it was Lee Marvin

darker than I remember
 
waiting to speak the lines that were
written for him
 
in a language he no longer understands

The Golden State

She said she left God
tied to a kitchen chair
in Tijuana
& who was I to question that assertion
 
The sun sank into the waves as always
& the night rose as always from those same waves
having learned all the prophetic songs
reworked into rhythm & blues
with a sound that was dark like silver
& I can feel it even now
racing through my veins
 
We slept on a stone floor in El Rosario
awakened in the dark by the thunder of the surf
 
The wings she sprouted every night while she slept
disappeared at dawn
 
She was a day crossed off the Mayan calendar
& I was staggering across the wet sand
shedding fish scales that
glittered like silver coins in the mist
 
I found her chemical attributes enticing
& she offered me a spoonful
 
The first one’s free but I’m seeing double
 
& inside fish tank auras & the distinct rattling of shadows
one rain drop per diem
 
For every door that opens, she said, another closes
as in a biblical remix her green lipstick & deep
burgundy nail polish an homage to the blood of
martyrs that have yet to be born
 
to follow in the footsteps of her sisters
transformed into iguanas as she speaks of them
 
We hit the road for Malibu or Damascus I
can’t remember exactly which
a pharmacy in Chinatown, fish tacos in a parking lot
near the beach
 
where we watched the gulls in flight turn silver
as the burnt turquoise sky
plunged into the sea