Way Down Below

Scene of the Crime
Talking smack about
running the table
against a wine-stained kimono
w/a troubled past
was like whispering your name
through a velvet curtain
in a dark motel room
down near Heartattack & Vine
 
Desire
Sometimes my heart races
like a vintage Corvette
w/a blown head-gasket
other times it’s more like a
rabid chihuahua
chained to a palm tree
in the rain
 
Love Minus Zero
If you asked me for a smoke & I bloodied yr nose
my bones would still ache w/longing
& my dreams like the wraparound wind
would lull you sleep as I unlace my sneakers
& cradle you like a fever

February 34th

Bowing deeply in the 4 directions
up, down, forward, & back
as aforesaid by Circe
 
“You have the right to remain unconscious” etc.
say the angels who crown me w/such
pleasant poppies
 
& filling the squirt gun with blanks
the day gets away from me like a fast horse
 
It starts to rain, I’m out of cigarettes, the
toilet works but you have to jiggle the handle
when you flush it
 
“Shall two know the same in their knowing?”
probably not
 
Against expectation I’ve got the feeling that
I’m beginning to look like the perfect stranger
ordering a Monster Taco at the drive-up window
of the Karma Repair Shop

24 Hours to Kill

Any road will take you there
but only one will bring you back
though by that time you may resemble
eternity
         in a grass skirt
                     behind darkwater
                     eyes              fluttering
                                  outside the beer store

& the only way I can answer that
would be to genuflect
right there            in the parking lot
                                                   like Sal Mineo
beneath the neon haze in black & white
as a palm tree plays a little shuffle music
with beach sand whispering
                                         across the sidewalk
like something you
could have said

but didn't
   

To Our Lady of Wet Sand as she swims down from the parking lot naked beneath her tattoos & silver

Martian blue eyes
hypnotized by the sea
I guess beauty can only
cop a plea as the sky bleeds
like a jelly doughnut
& my sunglasses don’t
hide a thing
 
The Heart Sutra
inscribed on a grain of sand
reminds me of sipping a Primo
while listening to reggae music
in the Aloha Island Grille
on a dark night in February
with water in my ear

I may have looked like the
shroud of Turin but I felt just like
King Kong on a bender
teaching the nuns how to
cheat at liar’s dice
& bragging about surfing Todos Santos
w/a girl in my fist

 

Mark It Zero

Did the tribal stomp & shuffle on the bluff
above the beach as the swell rolled in

heavy green water cut with foam

Dromedary days on the drought-stricken

central coast only make me thirsty

Hummingbird interrogates the red flowering aloe

Is there an answer for everything?

I didn’t think so
 

Slow on the Draw

1.  "True poetry is born out of the very
despair that the word is useless
and poetry is to be abandoned."
Shinkichi Takahashi

2.  The right word is as good as any other
if you say it like you mean it.

3.  Written language was invented by merchants
as a way to keep track of their wares.

The Confessions of St. Valentine

for Pamela

I used to calmly converse with the
vatos & their sisters
then reverse the charges

            Tequila w/salt tastes like blood I thought
                      & I never told that to anyone but you
                                 after first making sure that
                                             you weren't listening

& the way you return my dreams to their default settings
always careful not to spook the horses

            I never think about where you've been
                      although I often wonder where you are

your eyes catching the light just so

            like sun-dazzle on darkwater tide pools
                     when the seaweed is in bloom

This is what happens when you find a stranger in the Alps

It was the season of our savior’s

temptation in the desert

–he never could lay off the smack

The tai chi on the beach only confused me

I thought they were doing a slow motion watusi

to a Roy Orbison record playing backwards

I was dragging the Meister Eckhart Signature-Edition Longboard

through the sand feeling like the Ottoman empire in decline

yet somehow loaded with Chinese bells & whistles

& the warmth of the late winter pavement beneath my feet

felt like a debt repaid beneath the hazy blue sky where

gulls decide who will be left behind

& just the rumor of a breeze

gives the eucalyptus trees something to talk about

Mollusks at the Gate

The sky is stomping grapes

& bending the silverware into interesting

shapes                       

            the light returning

e quel remir if you want to get

hung up on it

The leaves full of voices

murmuring & disconsolate

& the light as it might reflect upon an alabaster nude

(choose the sex that works for you)

The eucalyptus leaves trembling in the wind

full of voices

a carefully shattered attention

disconsolate, perhaps

depending from a thread of smoke

Seaside diorama, surfboard in a bottle, & the light

suffused in haze

lamplight

thru a near transparent silk curtain

silver in shadow

la luz de Oriente

in a sharkskin bikini