If we meet later you won’t know me

like it was magic     

                                                a spell

            an enchantment

                                    Descending tides

reflected in mist & foam

            Aleister Crowley induced

                                    forensic incantations

Something I guess only sea-beasts

                        & Martians can hear?

A series of dreams

                                    sped up now played in reverse

Dear Kenneth Anger

Shell Game

“I is another” Arthur Rimbaud.

“I yam what I yam” Popeye the Sailor Man.

Sean Penn reprising Jeff Spicoli but playing me,

“Aloha, Ezra Pound.”

Truth as History, or An Ode to Medicine

Whatever happened to the blue sparkle

dancing across the water?

            The Adoration of the Magi

                                                if you want to get technical

                                    & who doesn’t?

I got the bongos but not the sunset

            plus an empty jar of vaseline

            & a voodoo doll in a grass skirt

“Priests and magicians are used in great number”

saith the I Ching

Drop step & lean into it as it falls

At last it is summertime

                                    I am not wearing a hat

I am at one with the drizzling fogmist

                        & the traffic jam on Water Street

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Winged visitors to the back yard today:

                                                2 towhees

                                                1 mockingbird

                                                3 scrub jays

                                                1 black phoebe

                                                            & a dragonfly

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

           

(Don’t get up, gentlemen,

                        I’m only passing through)

And Chrome Will Haunt Your Dreams

I noted gloom merely

                                    the time of day (night) or

submergent dalliance of ocean

                                                            fog persisting

at noon

                      not to be fooled with (though

a certain evanescence

                              in the guise of an extended vacation

                                                ie, a separate realm of existence

                                          quietly shrugs one another as if to say

                              “It is sad.  You are not transparent.”

Drum thump for nothing encased in drizzle open & shut

plus a cement slab of sky slanting percipitous

                                       if you blink you might miss it

otherwise lost or defiant but never both at the same time

                           by faith subdued & stagelit

                                         alleyways leading to the beach

Mist lifted from the waves proclaims its presence

“Remember me?”

                                    high tide        2.3 ft. at 5:48 p.m.

                                                           winds light & variable

Classical Studies

incense, seed pearls, the ace of tentacles

Ode to a Buick Skylark

“The ocean was there just a minute ago”

good to the last drop

green lush Bolinas / green lust Santa Cruz

variations on a theme (from one slippery         

mind to another)    

We call that row of empty bottles “dead soldiers”

although the battle has yet to begin

Standing in Line at the Taco Wagon

The circumstances that drive these hours

& days                       

            & the speed at which they pass

                                                “no comprendo”

as soon as you connect the dots they

                        scatter & reform sometime later

which is now

                        (sign & intial here)

Either direction, or both, I hazard to guess

                        nothing new on a scale of one to ten

it’s all stems & seeds

            except perhaps the memory of same

& the awkwardness of the one-legged seagull

                        but only on land

                                    when in flight it’s a different story

way west        & deep

The Thin Line Between Friday Night & Saturday Morning

What are we doing here

when we all have someplace else to be?

Refections in a silver eye

Return to Sender                      Handle with Care

                               heavy smoke, seagull feather

(intricate rhyme schemes so tenderly forgotten)

We watched the quail, a hunting & gathering tribe, wander

thru the yard all day.  “They are an indigenous people.”  Crow

calls & chainsaws create a certain ambiance, no?

It looks like we’ll be here for a while

And later, a small rectangle of dark blue sky w/stars

transforms itself into a small graywhite rectangle of

fog at dawn.  Only one way to get there, I guess we'll
need to install a handrail.

“Excuse me.” “Is that you?” “Be quiet.” “Don’t go.” “Listen.”

Sand pebbles say “We’ll be here long after you’re gone”

Seaslug: “Sorry I missed you”

__________________________________________

      Composed in the Philip Whalen Memorial Hermit’s Hut

      at the home of Joanne Kyger & Donald Guravich in Bolinas

      Friday night/Saturday morning, June 14-15, 2013

You don’t go killing all the bees

for Ainsworth

This Sunday’s services begin & end with

a mixture of hashish & tobacco

rolled in page 37 of our hymnal

                                                  (not really

it was actually a page ripped from one of those

miniature tide books they hand out at the Desolation

Surf Shop, corner of Tidewater & Sunset)

The subject of today’s sermon is

“The Dark Night of the Soul, or 
                                   Someone had to be There"

  

Addressing the congregation:

It is a wicked world although there are nasturtiums

& palm trees growing in it

& an ocean that stretches from 38th Ave to the
                                                                 drop edge of yonder

            any given Wednesday with pennies in my sneakers

                        & a dirty blonde alibi

                                    (the conditions of my parole)

What I meant to say was:

The steep gradual fogmist gave me yet another reason

to double back thru the cuts only to resurface on the bluff

            Ape in the rain at Cuernavaca

                        resurrected in dice games on the ocean floor

translated into every language even bird song

            & bubbles & the noiseless cry of algae

                        as the credits roll up

                                    & the music swells

This song & dance is dedicated to José Throwhammer, Jenny Staccato, & Tina Damp (you know who you are)

Pale moon

fluttering in a corner of the sky

                                                            spilling salt-

                        water

                                                across the swamp known as Beach

Street

                        the silver & the gold

                                                            & so forth

turquoise & chrome

                                                            ― a vast expanse, a great expense ―

               I’d trade in this sunburn for a sea-blue El Camino

               w/wings

                                      but deals like that just don’t happen anymore.

Strange bodies hovering outside the cheap cigarette store

                        there has to be an explanation

                                                                                 & I’m working on it

but it spooks the horses

There is reportedly a “cure”

It all happens in here (pointing)

broken silvergreen sentences

sustained by the lyric instability

of wet stones blinking in the foam

imprinted with scripture of some sort

graffiti that predates any known language

or wireless reception

The meaning of time like a stolen wristwatch

& everything else the fortune teller

forgot to say        who whispers in a cardiovascular language

the kind of thing you hear only when you’re not

listening        any other voice responding

spoken, unspoken                hell, I don’t know…

I guess it’s just another way of not being seen

There’s something there that will never change

precariously altered by the telling

Try it this way

Straight from the bottle that stuff

lingers like a puff of Papal smoke

an inquiry into the motive of the wrong-way driver

no comfort to take & none given

I thought of the bells ringing in your own private Shangri-la

& what it might look like from a parking lot in Huntington Beach

just before it rains

                                     When it’s your dice or mine, all

         or nothing,

                      that she be there in all her splendour

                                                                 (Charles Olson)

w/her irradiated pearls, ethanol eyes

& camouflage lip-gloss…

assuming her passion is more like a made for TV sequel than

fog laying down

                               flat upon the water

                                                                 on the darkest day of summer

in late November

                             but just as smooth just as relentless

when I’m six steps from whatever

                                            preempted by the evening tide