PLEASE HELP BLUE PRESS STAY AFLOAT

Sunday, March 24, 2013

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 

Thursday, March 21, 2013

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

Sunday, March 17, 2013

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

Monday, March 11, 2013

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

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

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

Friday, March 1, 2013

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