We ain’t going nowhere

The Pleasures & Pains of Opium

A stained-glass ’64 El Camino

parked in the temple driveway

40 DAYS & 40 NIGHTS

            staring into oblivion

                        oblivion stares back

            (it should have been a stained-glass

            Cadillac)

Just Add Water

nasturtium                       Plants eat light.

tree fern                            We assume they know

poppies                             what they’re doing

the bonsai palm…          but they don’t really

all bending in the           care whether we do or not.

sun just like                      Would you?

everyone else here

Taigu Ryōkan

“The sun sets behind the mountains

But I remain in the darkness, too captivated to leave.”

True Romance

This seaweed tequila takes me back, I said,

I can taste the winter swell.

Sea-stone green.  Dreamsicle orange.

A silver blanket of ocean mist.

The Garden of Earthly Delights like a bottomless

cup of coffee

looking for the pulse of Punta Baja.

I’d say keep your sunglasses on & lose the accent.

Tincture of opium is recommended, she said,

a Coleridge-in-Malta situation no doubt.  Back

in the carbon era

she would have been named

Muriel Nitrate & the long paddle out a

true measure of desire.

Red Tide at Muleskinner Beach

I could tell you about

rags & bones & the turquoise all-nighter

            the grace to be thus plundered

            divided by the square root of ground zero

                        The bag man’s alibi

                        quenching a global thirst

                        sounded bogus to me

Gazing out thru the portable window

I keep handy just in case I need to make a

quick getaway

            a running leap into the arms of gravity

                        splashing headfirst

                                    into a spilled drink

Running Water

The suffering begins → here.

Okay, that’s enough, start over.

                                    OYSTER MUSIC

A concerto for strings, woodwinds, brass & chainsaw.

            How about wet sand, seafoam & pearls?

            underwater acoustics

            execution style

I’ve got a discount ticket to the Floating World

( Ukiyo, 浮世, not to be confused with La Belle Époque

or a Saturday night in Santa Cruz )

Some kind of fleeting enchantment

Some kind of intrigue

Some kind of evanescence

Some kind of fuck up

            (payable upon receipt)

Speaking Into (not Thru) the Sea

Bubbles remain pinned to the breath

& within every rime & breeze

whispered across the

ivory concordance of foam

            syllables of Passage yet to be charted

tending to collateral & insistent

                        as blooms delineated by the wind when

            you were otherwise detained

                        beneath the pink pearls & rusted machetes

                                    of yet another guacamole sunrise

            & every shade of gray that falls between the handmirror

            & the beach with gleaming gunmetal tides

                        scrolling distraction while bearing witness

                        each bubble rises to the surface where it pops

                        freeing a word

The Fall of Saigon

The whirring of a helicopter woke me.  Could be it was just the ceiling fan.  Like in Apocalypse Now.  In the version of the opening scene that I play in my head there are choppers, palm trees, napalm, & Morrison crooning psychedelic “This is the End…” – but they’re the palm trees of Venice, & the view out thru the venetian blinds is of the Hollywood sign.

The word “helicopter” comes from the Greek helix (helicos) meaning “spiral” & pteron meaning “wing”.  This makes me think of Hermes, the Greek god of literature, learning & science.  He invented the lyre & the flute—but he is also the god of thieves.  While the wings at his ankles were never reported to be “spiral wings”, I always figured that he served as a kind of eye-in-the-sky for Zeus.

Here it was just a police helicopter, evidently looking for someone or something.  Searchlights strafing the backyard.  The neighborhood dogs started barking & off in the distance I could hear sirens approaching.

The first one’s free but I’m seeing double

That haze of blue sunlight might have

chipped the tooth of some god

or seagull

but it doesn’t keep me from

skipping like a broken needle

beneath palm trees swaying to a tune I can’t hear

 (there’s sand in my ear & a million reasons

the air was seasoned with salt-

mist & car exhaust & your heart was like a trampoline…)

I said I’m looking at the sky

as though it’s a homemade television set

balanced precariously on a lost horizon

curving soft & rounded like your bare shoulders

tumbling in a cement mixer

& I must enter again the cathedral of vaulted Pacific 

steel buttressed w/seaweed

& foam

            if only to reap the questionable karma

echoing in an empty 24 oz. Tecate can

smeared with lipstick

The Poet as Scenario (A preliminary map of the Metaphor)

The road north was just like the road south

only played in reverse.  I rolled in at

twilight feeling like Cortez—a real killer. 

Nothing had changed.

               There were candles, as I recall,

& a window painted black

                           reflecting the end of not this world

but the next

like a soundproof San Bernadino

in the cradle of Nowhere

or the eucalyptus alleyway

& the steps to the beach below?

On the corner there’s a little dive called The Island.  A string of tiny yellow bulb lights, like xmas tree lights, are hung over the door which is painted red.  There’s a small sooty cactus to the right of the entrance, cigarette butts & bottle caps in its thorns or spikes or needles—whatever you call them—& when shadows fall against it you can almost hear a sigh.

Partly Sunny w/a Prevailing Sense of Impending Doom

The remedial breeze

shuffling thru the gate like the Perfect Stranger

A probable wavescape perceived

tho we lack the pragma of diagnostics

preferring the simple relays of the short con

Roaring water roaring

in my head

                        leftover tropic storm surge

                                    in one ear / out the other

there was never any doubt

We park in the spot reserved for those wounded in battle

Order hepatitis cocktails at the Seismic Lounge

I need a surfboard shaped like my life I said

The waitress hands me a speargun & a dose of drizzling fog-

mist from an early Sunday morning in July

so promulgated between tides

There’s blood in my eyes

& a loaded question coming my way

any minute now

Or so I’ve heard

A deep white blue haze

incandescent

translucent        an orchid made of galvanized steel

                             & beach glass

                                                      doused in gasoline

                    offered to Our Lady of the Vanishing Point

wet sand

bottlecap                    leaning against the seawall

morning glory                                  putting a dent in Mexico

We defy gravity but that doesn’t mean we don’t fall

continuously

                        just to convince ourselves that we still exist

sort of

broken hearts, pocket cemeteries, torn pieces of black silk

tumbling in the shorebreak

                        as the wind shifts & the lights come on

                                               & we tiptoe thru the kelp grove

like a tractor             hauling a 20-ton blue valentine

waltzing Matilda all the way 

Repeat After Me

The Inventory (within eye-shot):

1.  Venice BAMBOO Calif.

(in script) on the longboard

2.  Royal Quiet DeLuxe

3.  Pacific Coast Highway

4.  Heavy Breathing

            (also of the process so inclined)

5.  A History of Violence

Tracing the shadow of a gull on the sand or

pavement                  end of Tokaido Road

Bend, Oregon                       spot on scarlet

Santa Barbara

            roosters crowing across the

Mexican or Guatemalan rooftops

in the vague care of palm shadows, leaf shadow

night of the lunar eclipse…

Pacific Overture

The dragon in the waves is our

connection to the East

The East is west of here

Torching the Pier

I should be paddling out now

into the tropic blue glitter

instead of dancing across Ocean Street

in a pair of broken huaraches

I’ve got a ticket to the sleaziest night imaginable

& it’s got your name on it

I will dive into the darkness of your eyes

& never come back

Meanwhile meet me in the alley behind the taqueria

I’ll be carrying a tire iron

& a surf manual translated into church Latin

We all have our dirty little secrets

& even if we don’t we can always pick up a few

along the way