PLEASE HELP BLUE PRESS STAY AFLOAT

Monday, February 9, 2015

50 Shades of Turquoise

A grip of dreamless blonde sand
& all the indulgences wrecked on adrenalin & perfume
drenched in corrugated steel.
                        The sky & the streets slanting down into the sea
                        just like me
                                    in advance of a cold breeze off the water
                                    that has knives in it.

You need not fear the Eskimos drinking Vietnamese coffee
nor the waterlogged legions of the dead leaving their damp
footprints on the concrete.
The beach is lit with votive candles in glass
            jars painted red & the damp pavement breathes
                                                the same air you & I do.

Draining the color from telepathic neons
the tides answer to a mythology
older than the gravity that sleeps in every stone
cobbled along the shore.
                        Something we don’t understand & only half believe
although you would probably dance to it if given
half a chance. 

                        We hit the road for Malibu or Damascus I
                        can’t remember exactly which.
                        A pharmacy in Chinatown, fish tacos in a parking lot
                        near the beach.  Redemption wasn’t in the cards.

                        Stagelit streets descending as in Tangier, or Todos Santos,
                        or an Albuquerque by the sea.

                        We slept on a stone floor in El Rosario
                        awakened in the dark by the thunder of the surf.

                        I may have been reaching out to you
                        with two or more hands
                        at that very moment
                        bending like a spoon to the flame.

A heel of sidewalk groaning with albatrossian hang-time
bedecked with seaweed brocade.  A surf manual
translated into Church Latin.  Chop suey w/a Spanish accent.

Straight from the bottle that stuff
lingers like a puff of Papal smoke.
So promulgated between tides.

There was sand in my ear & a million reasons
the air was seasoned with saltmist & car exhaust
            & your heart was like a flotation device…

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.