Stalling for Depth

It is Palm Sunday, a Tuesday, in September
& you're in La Jolla
a suburb of St. Paul, the Assassin

The fortune palms murmur
Sappho whispering to Homer
what being means
as an unspecified amount of rain falls
deflected by the windshield's aura of confidence

The sky sort of breathing
a jungle of details
eucalyptic

couldn't tell if I was feeling exalted or exhausted
the giant agave over-run w/second & third thoughts

dancing in parentheses

Septremble, Octember. Nowonder

A single word read sideways could be your
ticket to "The Poems"

Satin & lace
Seaweed & foam

No one ever said it would be easy but it was
lessons I've learned at last forgotten
where in other sentences if Truth is Beauty
it is again but who will be there when the bell rings?

I don't know I'm asking

As I made my slightly unsteady morning rounds I found a delicate, perfect spider web shimmering in the sunlight, so fine, precise, like a transparent LP, like the diaphanous ghost of an LP, suspended in the air above the mint & ragweed

Chet Baker's solo on "Summertime"

(Yeah, fuck the liner notes, Jimmy)

Not to be otherwise
here where I am & you
are
an instant felt but endlessly in the mind
as it flutters

A million dollar show w/a million dollar cast
in the musical extravaganza of the century

& you'll be there like water beneath the sea
like a shadow in the shade
like a word
whispered into the wind

Where I Live it's Wall to Wall Ocean Thus to Drift is Character

Damp gray days strung out like pearls
but a bluer shade of gray
w/dual exhaust
driving a little pink tractor 
thru another brutal sunset

all tricked-out in
fever haze

I wouldn't know 
from where I part the drizzle but
if you run the numbers you could probably make it work

half past Topanga, Santa Barbara, & Papua
New Guinea

It's raining right now
I left my feet in my other shoes
& yr heart is like a parking lot
paved w/clouds