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

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 

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

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

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

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