Learning to Live Without the Survival Instinct

The gray-white blue sky isn't exactly shimmering
above the beach where
seagulls dive into their own shadows

It can only happen here but only when I'm watching

A quick glance back over your shoulder
& the moment is no more
                                                 is gone
                                                                 remember?

"Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder" (quote from
Baudelaire?)

I can pray but I probably won't
as memory frames it
briefly for you or for me or some other guy
who doesn't know any more than we do what any of it means

The poor sick cat in pain unable to move
the vet injects a lethal dose of pentobarbital
the labored breathing stops

It seems I'm not such a tough guy after all
bringing sad broken Earle home in a cardboard box

We'll bury him out back among the nasturtiums

In the dark of the next morning I thought I saw his shadow
moving with that distinctly mincing step thru the living room

bright green eyes flash

then are gone

                                                                                  22 Aug 15

Hart Crane Sleeps with the Fishes

Not the Dark Rose but the CHRYSANTHEMUM

sea anemone

an illustration from The Western Book of the Dead

You ask me who do I consider to be the greatest surrealist of all time
& I say Busby Berkeley

Surrender the spilled drink

put a fork in it

The earliest maps show California as an island

Hazy blue afternoon laying flat on its back
beach pavement running all the way to Yokohama beneath the
variable shade of windswept cypress and tortured rhododendron

On ancient maps sea monsters represent the Great Unknown

"The most fearful of monsters is a well-known friend
slightly altered" (Kobo Abe)

sashimi tacos, two for 5 bucks

Not the fortune palms but the eucalyptus grove slope
just before it rains

& not the Garden of the Hesperides but Zuma Beach
when the seaweed is in bloom

Air Guitar (8 & 9)

8.
Torching the pier with
Su Tung-p’o, Mayakovsky, little John the Conqueroo
& the Jesuit surf team as light filtered down through the
sweet summer smog
& Mexican rock & roll made the sidewalk crooked
on a re-direct from aliens who were handing out popsicles
Ocean Park the summer of 1975
& I was wiping the rain from my drugstore RayBans
like Rimbaud at Punta Baja
The sky blue ’64 El Camino had a backstory that would
make Coleridge weep into his sharkskin wetsuit
with trouble in mind blues tipping the pagoda stool
I wonder where the sea breeze goes
when it isn’t here?
 
9.
She said Love is not a dream returning
beneath a sky the color of a sea stone
drenched in corrugated steel
 
I need a surfboard shaped like my life I said
She hands me a speargun
& a dose of drizzling fog-
mist from an early Sunday morning in July
 
so promulgated between tides
 
There’s sand in my ear & a million reasons
the air was seasoned with salt-
mist & car exhaust & your heart was like the T’ang Dynasty
edged in rust & Mexican turquoise
 
bending like a spoon to the flame
 
It’s always summertime somewhere
 
 
                                                            June 27 - July 14

Air Guitar (6 & 7)

6.
                                     When it’s your dice or mine, all
or nothing,
                          that she be there in all her splendour
(Charles Olson) reminding me of how warm the pavement could be
         at night in Ocean Park the summer of 1975
                  released on your own recognizance . . .
A damsel in distress drifts past, unseen,
her sad tattoos & pedicure,
3:45 p.m., back of Taqueria Vallarta, knowing every step
including the slide & pivot & exactly where that might take you
         as sunlight filtered down thru the sweet summer smog
on a re-direct from aliens who were handing out sun glasses
                  & Love is not a dream returning she said
It will never leave us when it goes
 
7.
“Do you know at the offering of which libation
the waters become endowed with a human voice
and rise and speak?” (Brihadaranyaka Upanishad)
 
From the beach it looked like Victory at Sea conditions out there
Sky the color of a sea stone cradled by the drizzle tide
Everything wet, trembling, waiting for you to make the next move
 
The haze of smog that lingered in yr veins
all summer long when the seaweed was in bloom
& you were bending like a palm tree in the breeze
 
I still have the photograph & the scars
& the silkscreened cover art in full color
(even black & white)
 
The light the air as yet unbruised
 
They call me Pagliacci but my real name is Mr. Earl

Air Guitar (3-5)

3.
The hand is quicker than the eye.  Okay, but
what about the speed of thought, the swift-
ness of emotion, the sudden recognition--
in a flash it’s gone.  “Fare thee well . . . ”
Sky the color of a sea-stone
drawn with blue-green T’ang Dynasty crayons
somehow rhyming with the remorseless passion I’m
attempting to skate through
The light the air as yet unbruised
was silver sometimes was emerald
but from torn canvas spilling rust
revealed to us the numbers of the heart
arranged as if by chance
& so we strike another match & pour the amber slow
because it is the only dance that you & I will ever know

4.
Wet sand          beach tar        seaweed           
silver           emerald          rust         & salt mist
“It’s only a head wound, Ma”
(nothing that can’t be fixed w/a little nail polish)
darkwater             sunset                albacore   
Your eyes like neon burning in the streets of Tijuana, Japan
broken glass         sea foam                 
T’ang Dynasty cigarettes soaked in gasoline
“Please list your name, address, & permutations”
Cormorants in their feathered robes huddled on the rocks
above tidepools edged in rust & Mexican turquoise
“I can drizzle & quake with the best of them”
shark tooth         bird shadow 
flower of Michoacán

5.
Sometimes the mist drifts past like a great whale
other sometimes it’s more like a Martian landing party at 
        Oxnard Shores
MORNING TWILIGHT        in letters 20 feet tall
The roadside ferris wheel & opium vendors with
trouble in mind blues tipping the pagoda stool
The light the air as yet unbruised
was silver sometimes was spraypainted with Paleozoic graffiti
to explain why the ocean is wet
The process of dreams without language
to bridge them from the reef to the shore
reflecting stones like clouds etched in glass
the wet pavement too much like the sky this time of day
but from torn canvas spilling rust
revealed to us the numbers of the heart

Air Guitar (1 & 2)

1.
It’s always summertime somewhere
& you’re walking back from the pier in someone else’s
Tijuana tire-tread huaraches
beneath a sky ripped from the tide book soaked in gasoline
& though our hearts remain pure as sunbleached pavement
we all have our dirty little secrets
& even if we don’t we can always pick up a few along the way
just to say Love is not a dream returning
& this is where your heart knocks to break
as if it was me tapping at the glass
& little John the Conqueroo lit a pipe
like Lopez at the Waimea
on a re-direct from aliens who were handing out cough syrup
as sunlight filtered down thru the sweet summer smog
 
2.
The light the air as yet unbruised
with vinyl upholstery & tinted windows
transports me to Ryoan-ji via iambic pentameter
& the Tijuana Sloughs
What about the speed of thought the torn canvas spilling rust
crepuscular Vermeer albacore bottlecaps
w/antediluvian puddles (poodles?)
Her darkwater pearls & Mexican silver
folded into sand swept by foam
reminds me of how warm the pavement could be
at night in Ocean Park the summer of 1975
released on your own recognizance . . .
& just as in the tragic relationship between flamingo & flamenco
the truth kind of sneaks up on you like a perfumed cigarette