PLEASE HELP BLUE PRESS STAY AFLOAT

Wednesday, November 27, 2013

An Epithalamium for Joanne & Donald

[A gong is struck offstage, & as the reverberation fades a conch shell trumpets, & then someone rings a bicycle bell.]

CHORUS (comprised of Buddhas, bodhisattvas, sea nymphs, brujas, blacktail deer, a tribe of California quail, & 2 towhees) – Is the paperwork in order?

                        BANG! (backfire from a 1962 Dodge pickup truck)

JOANNE – It took us 35 years to get here.
                        (chanting)
                                                My hand in yours
Your hand in mine

DONALD – Fairest lady, we are as two currents of water thus intertwined.

CHORUS – Harken ye, the gathered
& those that are scattered far & away,
Devas rise up & take flight
like bubbles from champagne!

THE JUDGE ADVOCATE – I declare…

[Violins, harmonicas, and Hawaiian slack-key guitars commence, drowning out THE JUDGE ADVOACTE who continues to speak unheard.]

DONALD – The sun shines upon the foggy glass lake & we shall go hence.

CHORUS (accompanied by a seagull & a chainsaw) -  Lo, they are showered with petals of rose & of nasturtium, all hail!

JOANNE – Well!

Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Go Ahead & Shoot

A wine-stained tombstone cutback
w/a kamikaze cross-step
however improbable
believes in itself.
Everything I know I learned at the movies
but I didn’t mean it that way.
Darkwater eyes blinking in the sun
as slick waves tumble into foam.
I thought I could taste tequila
& feel the warmth of concrete
radiating up thru my sneakers
at midnight
on a street I didn’t recognize.
Just me & “The Poems”
on the wrong side of the beach
looking for a needle in the sand.
Miracles happen when god makes the impossible
possible.  Breathing is essential,
I suppose, although often impractical.
A day half buried in the sand
half washed away in the tide.
“I didn’t even realize it was happening
& then it was done.”
November 19, 2013.  The mind opens & shuts.
I seem to have lost a day.

Wednesday, November 13, 2013

Silver Eyes & All

Hung on the wall like an ornament
Impossible hydraulic palm trees
rattling in the night on Beach Street
            their several garlands hoist
                        ensigns of light & proportion
into the star-studded moonless sky
with blonde on blonde enameling
just a few dark syllables from where
moist lips press stained glass
begging if you want me to look

Impossible
“Impossible doesn’t mean very difficult. Very
difficult is winning the Nobel Prize: impossible
is eating the Sun.”    – Lou Reed

Never Apologize: Never Explain
I can’t tell you what I say to the
stars at night because it comes from a
place where there is no language
& no tune to carry it home

Thursday, November 7, 2013

Between terror & lust (w/glass in yr sneakers)

I love when you blink my eyes in the chrome sky
it took me years to get that act down
sharpening the edges to a point where they no longer
cast a shadow

                           I was raised on rusted sunsets
& spoonfed sea mist until I learned the proper footwork

from deep green to turquoise

& now every day is Kung Fu Saturday
with psychosomatic swimming pools the size of Nebraska
rearing up on their hind legs when the wind shifts
& it always does
                             just about this time of day
as the haze gives way to
    kool-aid colors
             served on a half-shell
by an out-of-work exotic dancer in a seaweed bikini
who knows my name 

Tuesday, November 5, 2013

Exit Music

A Feeling for Leaving
Walk in one door & out the other
An explicit ritual
intended to rattle the ice in your drink but
since there’s nothing like it in the phrase book
let’s just say my heart is like a carburetor
flooded w/salt mist

The Long Goodbye
We did the shuffle then
I guess it was predestined
but we played it too close
The wind said what it had to &
sealed each kiss with airplane glue

3-Part Harmony
You say “Aloha”
I say “Adios”
& the mockingbird says
“Sayonara”

Saturday, November 2, 2013

Pacific Pipe & Forge Co.

Something doesn’t work, leaky
valve, got bent, blown fuse,
left out in the rain

over-the-counter pain killers not
much good for anything

Hauling water on a shoeless morning in November
takes care of the spiritual calisthenics for the day

No one picked up on the reference to green
nettle tea (Milarepa) so it’ll just have to be
our little secret

We’ll plead the fifth,
as Eddie says, “sometimes
science isn’t good with words”

I had to double-back to make sure it scanned
if only because it was the birthday of John Keats
he would have been 218 years old & most
probably wouldn’t even be able to lift a pen
let alone a flask of laudanum anymore

Keats was born on Halloween
as were two of my 3 sisters

Today is November 2, All Souls Day,
or El Dia de Los Muertos

which along with All Hallows Day &
All Saints Day, as any good Catholic knows,
forms the triduum of Hallowmas

At this time the peek-a-boo veil between the
material world & the spiritual world thins to an
almost transparent layer which is why you may want
to disguise yourself so as not to be recognized
by the dead

Tomorrow the time changes
from Pacific Daylight Time to
Pacific Standard Time

“If it ain’t broke don’t fix it”
Milarepa may have said that
& if not he should have

We speak a similar language
but no two people ever speak the
same language

Some things are better for being lost
in translation,
    bent, or broken
maybe that’s just the way it’s
supposed to be

Friday, November 1, 2013

In drifts from out

The clouds lay flat against the western
sky like shadows clinging to a brick
wall which from here resembles the warped
pages of a water-
damaged book
the inscription illegible
a map of veins that have burst within the
suicide morning glories
cascading around your shoulders
You gave them away as if anyone could
along w/the signature bump & grind that made the
coastline easy to understand
but difficult to pin down
whispering the way it sometimes does
in the heart’s house
as though it was the first time
& I’m bending like a blade of sand
against the late & early fogmist
w/the steel drum song of El Pacifico
piped in thru the tide
                        darker than yr eyes