Mutiny on the Bongos

If you can’t skid past the diamond
light etched in the sky you could always
torch a palm tree I said

you’ll never have enough
fingers to count the ways nor the x-ray eyes
to gaze past the velvet armor

(the blue tunnel leading to Yokohama
via Rosario Beach rippling on the rusty side
of forever
                        tipping back the twilight

if only to dull that silver tidewater resolve
& shake the turquoise dust of these lost moments
spent like loose change

a lemonade somersault in the diorama
as framed by the knuckles of your left hand

Viareggio All-Nighter

Too greasy to surf Purgatory Point
              the sundown shimmer locked on
                                                lyric interference
                              draining the breath
                                                                like Marlon Brando

Hang left at the sign of the green flamingo
spilling over into the wild silk yonder
that began in couplets & ended in a cement overcoat

I thought about your hazy eyes for a while
but I couldn’t make them rhyme with the cloud of
smoke that ate up the space between us

You were sinking beneath an Egyptian quotation
& I was the last poet standing

Sleepwalking on Water

Somewhere spilling the buzz
lit by a bamboo torch

colors of bodies like doors
or windows painted shut

learning to reap what is sewn
in that long undulating line

a restless rocking lullaby in
chrome (saltwater book of psalms

but washing up on the sand
like an empty bottle

one breath deeper than the last

The Long Aloha

I’m driving my
              El Ranchero handgrenade
into the everlasting
                              sunset which should be
              the end of the story

                                                I can see the credits roll
                              up into the bruised
                                                                pink haze
                                                that never asks
                                                                            never answers
                              above the ocean which is
                                                full of water

as I downshift & light a cigarette
                              no seatbelt, bottle of Pacifico
held low out of sight
                                                (it always seems like the
              next to last go-round

                                                even though I ask you to
                                                                  lie to me & tell me it isn’t

Reading Feb. 8 '09

Bop dada sunglasses begging a corner of sunlight

An ocean sky minus a cold steel giveaway
sub-dialup vibrato in the harmonic pipes
turquoise travelogue of debris strewn beach netherworlds
lotus blossoms rotting on the bottom of a motel swimming pool
(the built-in Buddhist chill factor

dead neon tiki ashes scattered in the wind

One thing leads & another follows
that’s the message here in S.Cruz waiting to be decoded
like a 12 volume suicide note fully loaded & bound in lead

Unforgiven

The tide fits snug up against
the seawall
              like a rip of death-defying architecture
as I space out inside
                              a scribble of sand on concrete
              here in the fog where
                                                seagulls howl like coyotes

Just another notch in the luminous
pearl necklace
              that hangs around the neck of slow time
while beneath the skin of
                              euphoric innuendo
              the skeleton of a smile falls apart

              but those eyes like fists of tequila
                                                lifted in the
                              blast & drizzle of all that we can
                                                                never know
              thick with tears & missed apppointments
                              peruse the index of what’s left unsaid

like an illegible name scrawled upon a
                              crooked cross at a makeshift
              roadside shrine
swallowed up by pinwheel blossoms & silver
                              weeds eaten by forgetfulness

to emulate & deny
              as the wind tunes the rusted
palm trees rocking in the cut
                              where I confess to every
              dovetail scam the heart can devise

Sunburned Leadpipe Seashell

Half smoke, half iron
& ripple smooth
these unwept burials per diem
when you’re crashing thru switchblade palm tree shadows
with tremor pulse reflections bouncing off the
trampoline surface of your cigarette

you might want to study organic shoe repair
or the 6 ton silence that rattles the windows when it
lands on the porch & you’re knee-deep in
it before you exfoliate like a bent piece of moonlight
spilling from the pages of a wireless hymnal
onto the wet sand

Debris

Words fall useless as tears
no matter the schedule of belief
we become the parody we always
suspected
                              the lyric disinclination
balanced out in fadeaway shades
forgetting the solemn numerology
embedded in a ragged sleep on the
drunken side of forever