NEW - Curse of the Surf Zombie

"Opstedal's noir palette covers a large swath of the California Coast, from Pismo to RCA. Loaded with atmospherics, like Turner at his edgiest. Let there be light, but wear 'dark glasses', and of course, watch out for weather forecasts that call for 'partly sunny w/a prevailing sense of impending doom'...John Donne comes to mind, early and late." - Donald Guravich

"Curse of the Surf Zombie reads like the Wasteland on Hopped up Sonnyboy Williamson driving Thomas Pynchon through the streets of LA in a '68 Yellow Impala with a Dodgers hat and a case of French Ticklers in the trunk." - Michael Price

The Money's on the Table & Yeah Yeah Yeah

Deep blue
                      deeper orange
silver green purple pink
                                         w/sparkler dims
& we haven't even made it to the beach yet

A brief pit-stop here to feed my demons

That was refreshing but not very enlightening
& now it's too late & you can never go back but
I don't really want to anyway

Sunlight refined to its purest form is what
holds the wave aloft & resplendent
drizzled o'er w/foam mist threads green & white

thinking ancient thoughts

Sayonara Hiawatha

The water was water colored
         as was the sunlight that danced across the
                  endlessly rocking surface stretching
                           to the horizon & possibly beyond
         w/murky submarine depths & surface sparkle

The surging pulse that runs thru everything that breathes

A list of places to go, things to do...

         The light goes from gold to blue
         the way it does at Punta Baja
                  as described in the bootleg copy of the Upanishads
                           that gathers dust on the back shelf of my brain

                  & the eucalyptus rattles in three-quarter time
                  a harpsichord played with a sledgehammer
                  while seagulls gavotte across the wet sand

Find the rhyme & follow it, she said
         but where does the breath go when it isn't here?

Snatched away by a crew of devas and asuras who
         should know better than to
                  fuck w/the regularly scheduled programming

The Late Late Show

It’s easy to get tired watching Lolita vs the Vampires
I might almost say it’s a sedative but my pharmaceutical experience
steers me in another direction altogether

& the moonlight drifting in through the venetian blinds
made me think of neon blurred in the fogmist at Hermosa Beach
not unlike the headlights of a submarine trolling the midnight streets

I had to catch the replay in glorious technicolor
all kinds of low-end torque rumbling in transition w/cracked
bells & clarinets washing up onshore with the incoming tide

I wore dark glasses beneath a desperate haircut & the
cypress trees were huddled above the beach like the Women of Thebes
& I could see the sky breaking open behind them

partly sunny w/a prevailing sense of impending doom