Check to See How Much is Left

Each Day Spills into the Next
Heaven’s Ghostly Refrain
behind a pair of mirrored aviator shades
– Is that bad feng shui?

End of Summer Sale
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.

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

4 Wipeouts & a Funeral
The Colonel told me that I had eyes crazed from
a thousand years of killing whales.  I took it as a
compliment & put on my sunglasses.

Remember the Shadows
The Chumash were one of the
few native nations to
bury their dead in a prone position
underground.
A single grave would be used for
more than one body
over the years.
The bodies were separated by
layers of whale bone.

Ed Ruscha Said They Called Her Styrene

Damp ash-gray days strung out like pearls
         a pre-existing condition
                  bubbling up from the cracked pavement
 
No one ever said it would be easy but it was
 
         & the implication these remnants betray
                  relegated to the depraved indifference you so
                           carefully cultivate along with
                                 revoked apparencies as here the tail always
                                 wags the dog
 
but when the drink hits the fan
         in the middle of your
                  underwater ballet lesson
         the resonance is as derivative a consequence
                           as a ransom note
                                    written in seagreen lipstick

¿Como se dice?

Turning back while looking dead ahead
The daily dalliance that often seems so crucial
Say it one more time as the drizzling truth of the matter tends to
stall out on the transfer
                                            The phrasing of the late afternoon ocean
breeze
              & whatever money you've got in your pocket right now

MERGING TRAFFIC

                          "Where did
                                                      that
                          missing
                                             shade
                                  of blue
                                                 come from?"

Neon highlights to an otherwise dreary tale of redemption
like whatever’s left burning on the altar…
 
Summertime is knocking at the door
Black palm fronds (plumes) a tangle of nasturtiums
 
Fall asleep reading Death on the Installment Plan
 
Peruvian lilies
quite by accident

Small Fortune

1971
Kicking thru the weeds in a tin can vacant lot
listening to Mr. Soul on somebody’s transistor

Evidently a Design Flaw
I concentrated 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

24 Hours to Kill
“If you are expecting poetry to
tell you something you can use, you better
reconsider the wings on the poet’s sandals
and the rules of the game Elegua plays.”

                        ―Duncan McNaughton

Live from the Forbidden Planet
The distribution of the
divine graces plus seven
sacraments & the over-
whelming realization that
you can’t run from a gorilla

Christ dragging his cross thru yr flesh like a plow
She had that “Let’s get
hammered” look in her eyes
& I said that I would meet her
halfway there