PLEASE HELP BLUE PRESS STAY AFLOAT

Sunday, December 21, 2014

Motive & Opportunity

1.
Tidal swamp brocade
a tangle of nasturtiums
green leaves chrome yellow
blossoms
light & stones & trembling
petals
            rushing seafoam whispers
2.
Light swamps brocade
a tangle of whispers
chrome yellow & trembling
seafoam
            green leaves blossoms
            & stones
3.
Light in the seafoam
tangled chrome
yellow brocade
swamp stones trembling
                         to be sure
          whispering green leaves
          rusted nasturtium blossoms
who knows why petals
tidal wash sand swept beach pavement
now you see it
4.
& now you don’t

Monday, December 15, 2014

Moe Howard in the Underworld

The winter sun tells its own story

The beach sliding beneath the foam & variegated
sparkle of the winter sea tells another

the sound of waves crashing in a bottlecap
for example
         flickering neon behind scarred glass
                  a nun weeping at the ticket window…

Souls out of Erebus or Bakersfield
or any given night on Hollywood Blvd
stagger into the spotlight
led by one who is little more than a shadow
sketched in a mirror
armed with a seltzer bottle, a lead pipe,
& a Beatles haircut

Those sledgehammer eyes glaring beneath
         thunderous eyebrows in that dark place
                  & the spiked kool-aid reflecting all of this
                           like wet sand at low tide
carefully folded like a piece of concrete
& kept close to your heart
that we may learn the steps & the consequence 

Thursday, December 11, 2014

Some Might Say

A rain heavy sky
dark, mid-morning, winter
preempted by Bela Lugosi in Island of Lost Souls
Morphine Like Swimming
& a black stocking mask that reveals more than it hides

A sky heavy w/rain
I heard someone say it could have been the time of day
or maybe it was just the terza rima that everyone seems to speak
in my dreams

Heavy rain sky
I’d like some magic at this point
nothing special just the everyday run-of-the-mill type magic
& a safe dry place to put it when its done

Sunday, December 7, 2014

Chinese Take-Out

It was like leaded glass out there
when I got back I couldn’t hear out of my right ear
         & yet I was so captivated by your
         hesitation & the way the wind dropped to its knees
                  in how shall I say it “awe”

I did my Dude the Obscure routine & she lit another cigarette
dueling saxophones & a big Chevy V8
providing the soundtrack
dark notes & the remedy “on the cuff” they say
         but they never mean it that way
                  shuffled in as it is with all of the other small
sufferings of the heart & such
         only tends to make one feel stupid & why not

We’ll sit out on the pier pretending we don’t
know each other & we’ll count the stars
There aren’t as many as there once were so it won’t take long

Friday, December 5, 2014

Channel Nine

Dragons in the clouds
I know how they got there but I can’t tell you

To sink or to swim
it’s an interesting question but I’d just as soon sit back
& see what happens

Nine seagulls in a loose formation flying back to the beach
means the rain will be stopping soon
________________________________________
The sun
light slips
in be-                                      What time is it?
neath the
clouds
________________________________________
On, out, & over,
over the edge, & back,
under, I’m just asking, & caving in like the Upanishads on a
Tuesday morning after, not necessarily tangled in seaweed,
the deep white blue haze fades into snake games on the side-
walk, which was to be expected, given the way you said it, I’ll
say, & saying it over again just to make sure I got it right, I
wrote it all down, backwards…
________________________________________
Helicopters were called in to
investigate reports of a floater
out near the end of the jetty

Monday, December 1, 2014

Big Wednesday

Some things are best said without words
your tears for example told me more
than I ever wanted to know
& not unlike spilling rosary beads into a
lifesize replica of the Pacific Ocean
parked near the intersection of Wipeout & Windward
which I often referred to as “Wind Word”
seeing as my shoelaces were untied & ¿Que te parece, Cholita?
as they say on a moonless night at high noon in Beach Flats
Pee-Wee, Paco, Esmerelda, & Lupe as he was known then
though of Irish extraction aptly nicknamed Weasel
on the streets of Santa Monica in or around 1974
died of unspecified “complications” as we all must I guess
everyone shocked or amused              flip a coin
Something to do with prying off bumper stickers
on days when the asphalt sagged beneath the weight of an
obscure sky “Earthquake Weather” they called it
warning that the California coast would eventually
slip into the sea & not a moment too soon

Friday, November 21, 2014

We Had a Shared Medical Condition

What it was held up to a patchwork sky
leaning in on the serpentine coast
darker than that god you used to pray to
at every roadside shrine we passed

I decided that you eyes were
like the pigeons of the Holy Ghost
roosting upon the Temple of Ephesus at dawn
or was it the Ventura pier at sunset?

Either way the rustling of wings
took me back to the palm trees of Venice
& the Egyptian labyrinth of alleyways I trekked
every day on my way to the beach

It never ends until it does like breathing
& to crisscross the furious tropic of dreams
I said Tell me EVERYTHING but
please be ambiguous

& the light fell like dust on the pages of our
sworn testimony as a warm breeze rolled
thru the fortune palms

Wednesday, November 19, 2014

Today is November 19

Hey, Joanne

Happy Birthday

Wednesday, November 12, 2014

Deliverance

The bottle was half empty
that’s a fact
perception had nothing to do w/it
I taught myself Spanish
just so I could sing along
Doors opened and shut
The concrete steps that led
down to the beach were covered in
graffiti, blood, and seaweed
The wet sand was the color of your eyes
I was sipping the salt mist
you were sliding past all that
like a shadow on stained glass
The music was great
I did the Shuffle, I did the Stroll, I did the
Quasimodo

Sunday, November 9, 2014

Water Music

for Alison

Remnants of summer still
layered in ocean fog
A butterfly, a seashell,
a guided tour thru the
entertainment capitals of the world

Saturday, November 1, 2014

There was a time I thought a thesaurus was a kind of dinosaur

Although I was hopelessly distracted by Water Moon Kuan-yin
& some rather naive local shrubbery it was the cloud pattern that
kept me guessing
& like those who know or those who don’t but wish they did
those empty waves at the Lane deliver news
of distant storms that died at sea leaving nothing but a soft
sigh to be picked up by a weather satellite & transmitted to palm trees 
along Beach Street
                        as they present an interesting tableau set against the 
hazy blue upholstery of a late summer sky
                            green entanglements notwithstanding
I had a stolen surfboard & a library copy of Songs & Sonnets 
my hands resembled my father’s & my heart was like a Mars bar
melting on the manifold of a ’56 Chevy

Saturday, October 18, 2014

Hawaiian Noises

The green lipstick was a dead giveaway
& measured in intervals like beach tar
but only when the heart drops like a pelican
& the haze settles in behind your sunglasses
like something that can only be found in
Diebenkorn’s Ocean Park series
though scarred like the underside of a skateboard
I took every possible detour getting here
any number of which could have resulted in
blurred vision or feelings of euphoria
but having mastered the art of walking Spanish
I was uniquely qualified to spill a Bloody Mary into
a Malibu swimming pool shaped like the pale ocean sky…
Such passion is usually reserved for those with some cachet
though peeling rubber in the clinic parking lot
certainly didn’t hurt any
it was kind of like a skin disease nobody wants to talk about
set to the music of a plastic souvenir ukulele
& the pale ocean sky, remember?
it was like a roll of film that had never been processed

Sunday, October 12, 2014

Breathing thru yr fingertips

Dropping in on one last mushy floater was
just going to have to be enough
knees slightly bent, arms hanging down, relaxed
Jack Christ on a mule a seabreeze rattling the palm trees
great blue heron heading east like Bodhidharma
signs & wonders or what little Jimmy found
on the tideflats I believe in the supremacy of rust
The Mask of the Redeemer
late summer nights that smell of burned fog
Sat right down in the middle of the street
talking to myself a trick I learned at the halfway house
it was the Feast  of St. Francis
The Blessing of the Animals
a final reckoning a photo opportunity
From the beach you could just make out
a rolling left break w/a bowl section
mas fina off the point shrouded in mist
Seafoam & adrenalin in a mason jar tucked under yr arm
ars poetica made of time & water hecho de tiempo y agua
to be exact following deer tracks in the wet sand
sworn to a sky of turquoise and of silver
iron rebar bleeding rust onto broken concrete
the roach of “whatever”
& the descending of the tide

Sunday, October 5, 2014

End of Summer Sale

It felt as though I was reliving the
chord changes of Lou Reed’s Sweet Jane

Chalk it up to nerves & a feeling for
            dark corners where there aren’t any

I’m assuming it was systemic
as it lead to all kinds of fancy slide-step action
            while wearing a lucha libre mask

& 4 bald tires & a leaky fuel pump later
            it occurred to me that I may have only been
                        experiencing a flashback

The hot wind from inland was dry & scented w/ozone
like an old library copy of Pliny

Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Evidently a Design Flaw

Listening to “The Water-Damaged Blues”
a real toe-tapper like
            rusted emeralds spilling against the
                        rocks cobbled along the shore

“Anointed w/seafoam”

I had acquired a very particular set of 
skills over a long & desperate career
last seen copping a couple of blank
            sheets from god’s prescription pad
which resulted in a decidedly Roman Catholic hitch
in my getalong

                                    & as my sense of morality was
roundly criticized I decided to concentrate on my
footwork
which she insisted on referring to as an
“exit strategy”
            but I wasn’t so sure of the rhyme scheme
                        in the third stanza
                                  entitled “It’s only a head wound, Ma”

(nothing that can’t be fixed w/a little nail polish)

& there was nothing left to do but drive
90 miles-an-hour in reverse
back to the beach
                        where I cultivated all the poise & presence
                        of a burned-out movie star 

Friday, September 26, 2014

Antisocial Networking

Ain't got the do-re-mi
Dry leaves rattle like
empty beer cans

Variations on a Meme
Uniforms in an unmarked car

Sign Language
Giant ropes of seaweed
tied around tree trunks
& a riddle of stones
carefully laid out in a pattern
on the sand

The Getaway
Falling past the lark & seagull sky
            (painted in colors I
                        couldn't begin to describe)
all the streets here
            slope down to the sea

Friday, September 19, 2014

Light & Proportion

The 3-Second Rule
She said I was transparent but
it didn’t mean that she could see through me

Guess Again
Blue sky w/clouds
strategically placed
            like defining moments

                        Smells Like Coppertone
                        Your glory days never did quite pan out
the way you thought they would, matching quarters in the
vacant lot across from the taco wagon, or counting the grains
of sand that filled cracks in the beach pavement as the late
summer sun boiled Vietnamese kool-aid
on the hood of a yellow Corvette

Friday, September 12, 2014

To the Revolutionary Cadres of Big Sur, Morro Bay, and Oxnard Shores (or, Sometimes a Great Ocean)

A short drive up the coast
            & the long walk back
(we had to confirm that the break was surfstainable)
but only during voodoo business hours
            Shadows on the water between tides
                        a pale green translucence
"It is advisable to look from the tide pool to the stars
and then back to the tide pool again."
            (John Steinbeck, The Log from the Sea of Cortez)
Each day is a lesson
knocking back cans of Oly & smoking
            Kool 100s w/Tippy-Toe Soul
                        out on the loading dock
to keep your blue eyes black
& your idle hands busy
            tunneling to Shangri-la
w/the seabreeze whispering like a billion dollars
in counterfeit bills
spilling from the canopy palms

Saturday, September 6, 2014

Like So

“The creative person should have
no other biography than his works.”
                                        –B. Traven

My dirty eyes dusted w/sunlight
            hovering between transpacific jet lag
                        & the last recording of the Memphis Jug Band

I used to think “One day I’ll just disappear in Mexico”
until I did (as, but not like, Ambrose Bierce)
Now everything is different
The wind shufffing thru las palmas will never be the same

Something about karma & liberation
which could be better expressed by
her damp panties pulled to one side, for example

The sky is wearing a shiny blue suit in the green room
as seagulls pause in mid-air
above the waves
& all the luminous details
            like familiar faces you just can’t quite place

& never will

Monday, September 1, 2014

Probable Cause

The headline read:
More Buddhist-Catholic Voodoo, or
I Must Have Done Somebody Wrong
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
No Contest
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
            I plead guilty to
            transgressions
            both real & imagined
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
                    “My how time flies!”
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
seems like
forever

Sunday, August 24, 2014

A Crash Course in Circular Breathing

Melodic birdnotes & bedsprings
providing all the commentary required
& the doll-like way she
            sleeps in my dreams

her heart playing electric bongos you
            hold to your ear like a seashell
                        because this time you’re really listening

but then something she said
            made me feel as though I was
peering through the stained glass windows
            of a Coupe de Ville
                        parked on the bottom of the sea…

& now it’s later & I’m treading water

a shadow among the tangled seaweed swaying

& I don’t know where we’re going but 
we’ll be there any minute now

Monday, August 18, 2014

Uncut & Commercial Free

Guilt by Association
He said she said
& it all went to hell from there

Famous Last Words
“I’m sure you’re an excellent accordion player”

Show Me the Way to Go Home
1. Falling leaves & needles.
2. My voodoo doll piñata. 
3. Floating out to sea.

Friday, August 8, 2014

Auto Focus

Shrouded in a drizzle of mist
the ocean (reclining) insists

                                    SUMMERTIME BLUES
                                    (ain’t no cure, etc)
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 
Boiling ocean poppies
on the black & blonde sand

                   Your errant passion, my autographed copy
                   of the sky over El Segundo

             ~ a light seduction ~

                                         I could swim thru all that you spill
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 
pitching a fit
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 
                                                           “Everything is water
                                                            if you look long enough”
                                                            (Robert Creeley)

Friday, August 1, 2014

A Man’s Got to Know His Permutations

The sky is whispering (green) & softly
dusted w/silver haze…
& so the message gets thru     encrypted     like her shoulders
which are bare white miracles darkened by the sun

            & riding the High-Stakes Bodhisattva Blue Cloud Express
            thru all that rippling concrete and asphalt
                        human forms, bird shapes, & fish shadows in
                        extraterrestial bonsai gardens planted in tide pools

                                                rocks strewn along the shore

                                                                        plus two & a half starfish…

Pelican surfing a thermal, stalls, turns, & drops (splash)
a mid-morning snack.

                        No waves. The ocean is asleep. Playing possum.

                       “I couldn’t find my sunglasses
                       & then I did.”

                                 “They were right there where the invisible
                                 skeleton hand left them.”

& so the next day…

endless failing, falling, fading                   walk around outside
in the sun under clouds      cactus, orchid, anemone     sunset/shadow
turquoise & silver (a “get-rich-quick scheme”
                               wrong from the get-go, burned in effigy, prayed to,
                               disemboweled on a stone
                               altar decorated with human teeth, pornographic
                               pictures & votive candles anxiously flickering
                               in little red glass jars
                               strumming the ribs of clouds

Lo que está en mi corazón

                     & Muddy Waters singing “Big Leg Women”
                     just to keep it honest

Polished bronze sky a dark mirror tilting into the sea

Okay, I guess, if taken in the proper dosage

(the proper dosage is always 5 times more than that which is recommended)

Saturday, July 19, 2014

Picking up the pesos

Wondering what happened
to all of the money
you didn't spend on drugs...
_________________________

          PAGAN RITUALS (the nuns
          used to pass around a can
          collecting coins for the
          "pagan babies")
_________________________

Pitching pennies into the sand
          the shoreline drenched in pale sunlight...

Great cities will grow there over night

                     & just as soon will vanish

Friday, July 11, 2014

Eternal Combustion Engine

Haze of blue light turning white
right there on the foam ledge

flower of Michoacán

reminds me of how warm the pavement could be
at night in Ocean Park the summer of 1975

released on your own recognizance…

“Do you know at the offering of which libation
the waters become endowed with a human voice
and rise and speak?” (Brihadaranyaka Upanishad)

everything wet, trembling

waiting for you to make the next move

Saturday, July 5, 2014

Travels in Abyssinia, the Harar & Santa Cruz

It’s dark down here on the sand
although the sky’s lit up like
Mega-Millions gnawing on a lightbulb
above the pearl-handled tide

& the way your breathing sort of
          ripples thru the mist
makes me want to pull the shade on
a thousand years worth of
                              ocean sunsets

but I’m hooked on whatever happens after
as the streets give up their
trembling denial
                           & the moon hauls out it’s
          black velvet paintings
                          each worth at least a half-
minute of silence
                       
         pacific standard time
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
            Vista Point
            Ornamental pavilions of rust
            consecrate the shoreline
            caught in the glare of fishscale chrome
            as far as the eye can see
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 
We get that golden aura off the
late afternoon sun & we’re several bottles past
the trembling blue agave light
as at Playa San Pedrito
previously breathing fire & sea-mist
The initials carved there in the half-light
explaining nothing as I can only remember
the taste of her lips
& the smooth transition
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Angle of Repose
Bending in the rain
like a double-jointed palm tree
as the flashlight batteries give out…

Arcades of black eternity in blue mascara
            out there in the windblown seaweed
the meaning of time like a stolen wristwatch
& you can sing along if you want to
following these damp footprints back to when you
never knew the difference
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
            When asked of their origins
            the Chumash point to the west
            out over the Pacific Ocean
            as being the home of the First People
            a place they call the Land of the Dead
            where the Great Spirit lives
            in a crystal cave
            on the bottom of the sea
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
BROKEN SILVERGREEN SENTENCES
SUSTAINED BY THE LYRIC INSTABILITY
OF WET STONES BLINKING IN THE FOAM
She was stapled like a cloud
to a corner of the sky
the color of beach pavement
                                    & I was a wine-stained tombstone cutback
as ominous as a shadow
                                   falling across a bead curtain
                                                                  in another room

The sunset glass made it a perfect setting for
a soul session with the drainpipe crew
& we danced on the string of a tropical memory
                                   as she always preferred something euphoric
a tidepool with a fuse in it
for example
                                    lit & sputtering
as long as it left a scar
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 
The water was cold
              the waves had a glassed-in purity
that shattered into white foam
                            with plumes of mist flying back
                        (The Dragon in the Waves)
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 
Circling the Drain
like trance music & sun stroke
to float the memory
            sleazy but essential

& no more shipwrecked kimonos
to worship in silhouette
            where we’re the only survivors left
to blink       in the fog
                           & wonder why