PLEASE HELP BLUE PRESS STAY AFLOAT

Thursday, August 29, 2013

After the reading...

...we picked up some BBQ, & Pamela snapped this picture.

Sunday, August 25, 2013

Let it Bleed

Half a moon hanging in the sky
Is it waning or waxing?
Allow me to consult the Chinese calendar
& the tide book
                           & that look in her eyes

Reading east to west:
bamboo, Los Sinners, a leap from the pagoda roof
into the ocean below
                        circled by air, murder & other
extravangant technologies…
                                    eye of the Dragon         tooth & nail

The alchemy of the midnight tide
            or the stained glass catching fire at sunset
                                    same difference

“Ain’t it a shame” the Medicine Man used to say
speaking of atomic theory
accelerated particles yakking it up as the music plays

like flying saucers getting dizzy

the invasion postponed

Sunday, August 18, 2013

Reading in Santa Cruz, Friday, August 23









  • Reading by poet Kevin Opstedal
  • Interactive photo booth
  • Wine and light appetizers
  • Books and broadsides by the poet will be available for purchase

Live Oak Library, 2380 Portola Drive, Santa Cruz, CA.
Phone: 831-427-7711.

Friday, August 16, 2013

The way the deal went down

Sometimes the mist drifts by like a great whale
other times it’s more like a Martian landing party
at Oxnard Shores
burning oil on the road to the land of the dead

A wind went by just now
it had traveled across the vast Pacific
sprinted over the beach at Cowell’s & up Ocean
Street
            stumbled thru a few palm trees here on
            Wipeout Avenue
                        & continued on out to Donner Pass

future beach front property if the Mayans were right

            Wind rippling thru the venetian blinds
            w/ trouble in mind blues imitating Samoa
                                                while a ghost thing like love
                        tosses shadows like spare change across the
                                    sidewalk outside the Kung Fu Taqueria

representing something that must remain casually unresolved

locked away where the seabreeze goes
when it isn’t here...

            A southwest swell building in overnight          

            I can feel it in my knees

            The dawn’s first light / a match struck
                                                on beach pavement

& then the mist & the silk & the neoprene
w/plumes of adrenalin like gasoline
setting fire to the kelp grove

            in advance of the full-rail cutback

            boiling ocean poppies

            the name of the morning sky

Saturday, August 10, 2013

Dropping in on a floater

Ocean water sloshing
up against the curved inner walls
of the skull

It doesn't remind me of what I've become
anymore than a guitar w/a broken neck
searching for the cantilever section of
Between the Devil & the Deep Blue Sea
as performed by Dick Dale & the Del-tones

The octopus wears dark sun-
glasses
              obviously a disguise bent
over backwards on Walking Crucifixion Day

I mean flush w/beer money
& trading lies for kisses

My mind is like a ‘68 Chevy Malibu
busting a U-ey in the middle of the 405

& my heart is the B-side of Louie Louie
played with a broken needle
on one of those old portable set-ups you
might find at a thrift shop
if you look hard enough

Thursday, August 8, 2013

No End in Sight

Angels or demons
I don’t think it makes any difference
wings out-stretched
inside the wind (as prescribed)

“Who’s dream is that?” 
                                                           This
is another.

            Gargoyles tumbling in thru the bedroom window
            clutching harpoons & ropes of seaweed

                        The Yield & the Occurrence

                                    significant only in the derivative
                                    surf-o-rama.

How Green is My Africa

aloe vera  /  bougainvillea

I could re-phrase all this so that you’d know excatly
what I’m talking about, but
what fun is that?

Sparks flying off the lip of the curl
subliminal, & green

Monday, August 5, 2013

The Fujiwara Effect

She was wearing mules
the shoes not the animals
altho for a minute there I had this vision…

but then the wind turns & she turns w/it
the pavement surging beneath the sand
“California style” she said, but
I wasn’t convinced

Occasionally the algae blooms
& the fish die washing up on the beach
like silver spoons

We do the tango to waltz music
followed by the hully gully, the twist,
the watusi, & every ripple
in the evening tide

ending in a seaslug duckwalk
right off the end of the pier

Saturday, August 3, 2013

El Tarantula

I woke up in
                                    Bolinas or Sumatra
            w/Tibetan rap music pulsing in the woodwork
                        blue sky hopping the curb
& the descending tides
            slowly shifting colored light set alongside the
samurai plunge

            Absinthe & Digitalis
                        The Oracle of Del-Fi
                                    Omega Strings & Slipknots
            tilted in the transcendental seabreeze
                                                cutting a deal with Medicine Buddha

& the smoke laying out sideways was more than enough to
think about between gulps of seawater
& kerosene
                        it all turns to glass in your dreams

yet the memory remains
pounding on a beached piano wired for silence

            A catchy little number

                                    but can you dance to it?

Thursday, August 1, 2013

Two-Tone Chilean Winter

BENDER
Deep in a swoon (or a swoop?)
on a bender…

CHINATOWN          
 “It’s okay, buddy, it’s
Chinatown”

CONVICTS
Nuggets of black tar smuggled out in
the chop suey like hacksaws for convicts

ESCAPE
In both senses then to facilitate an escape

MIRROR
Tunneling thru the mirror

TIME
Blue eyes bleached by the sun & sea-mists of time

WISER?
The eyes of the pelican are darker perhaps wiser?

TUNE
On a subsistence level I guess I’m
whispering your tune

FLOATER
It’s best not to think when you’re dropping in on a floater