Beach Landing

From turquoise heights

to the bleached-blonde sand

            the shuffle of bare feet on the rotting

                        concrete steps keeps time

            like they say the tell-tale signange

                                    only points one way

            but from the tidewater balcony

                                    cradled by fog & vapors

summoned by dark women

            in feathered robes

                        without names or vows

the beach seems lit with

votive candles in glass

jars painted red & the damp

                        pavement breathes

                        the same air you & I do

returning somewhere trembling

            in the powdery blue light 

I Shall Be Released

for Jimmy Dunagan

Ensenada

Scandinavia

The Velvet Underground

Dockweiler Beach

Hokkaido

Knossos

Oxnard Shores

The Holy Land

Los Kahunas

The Sea of Tranquility

Pico & Sepulveda

Tierra del Fuego

Devout footwork & the voodoo Buddhist shakedown

            seagull, sunshine, Mayakovsky

            in a Hawaiian shirt

at 85 mph you’re

thistledown

drifting across the highway

                                                horses

            re-assemble their dreams

                        spooked by the eucalyptus

            rocking with the wind                   

                                                            clouds so low

            it’s difficult to keep yourself from reaching up

            to touch them

                        the way I reach out to touch her cheek

                        every time I run a red light

palm trees, parkinglots                   it’s all a blur

            My wooden eyes were carved for her

draining the color from telepathic neons

                        shattered in the rush of the tide

as we weigh the temporary cure

& the finder’s fee

            beneath a sun that has stalled out now

                                    just inches above the dark

                        corrugated sea

Holes in my soul big enough to drive a tornado thru

How often like a thief taking stock of

whatever is owed

            the day bought & paid for

                        with stolen moments

by faith subdued & stagelit

alleyways leading to the beach

            mist lifted from the waves

                        proclaims its presence

                                    “Remember me?”

2.               

Milarepa said there were four ways in

& one way out

but then the dead don’t shimmy in the

            stained glass display window

& the fogmist like a leadweight

            holds the pier in place

when everything else is falling from your

                        bulletproof kimono

& guitars bend like uncharted constellations

in that darker place behind your eyes

            3.               

            Your relfection

                        & others

                                    in the ocean rush

            the murmur of

                        unanswered prayers

                                    in the eucalyptus

Carving Up the Ozone

Palm leaves flapping in the wind

like Neptune’s trenchcoat

on the bluff at sunset

a looped & windowed raggedness prevails

glowing in the dark

like a radioactive ’64 Chevy Malibu

w/a dead alien in the trunk            (Repo Man, 1984)

            as we seem destined to

                        occupy smoke rings

                                    that drift up into the

            Martian prayer flags

                        hanging among the fly-strips

                                    out on the porch

another prerequisite for a salvation we

never signed up for

            which I took to mean the prototype

                        tilted in the mist

                                    above the beach

bouncing quarters off the dark

incoming tide

Origami Piñata

The sky is folded & so

transformed

by every cloud that skates

past at an altitude

we have so diligently pursued

the way collapsing stars

tunnel through the sand

            something you never imagined

                        although you were expecting it

This place you now inhabit

            hit with shattered chrome

                        & darkened mirrors that

deny your reflection as you might gaze out through

windows painted black

it is the flawed pearl you’ve learned to treasure

& just as the tides answer to a mythology

older than the gravity that sleeps in every stone

cobbled along the shore

we share a residual devotion to every song of redemption

that has yet to be sung