The Sunset Motel

The sun drags a string of rusty cans along the horizon & the onshore breeze rides in thru the cypress like Venus on a half-shell huffing airplane glue on the road to Xanadu. The bluish silver-green haze tied w/a pink ribbon & my hesitation to bail on the scene drifting like smoke rings under water, but it wouldn't hurt to read the footnotes. The supplication & the statistical anomalies dissolving in the mist of former expectations. I wasn't listening but I heard every word. The sky bends into flickering neon. The tuning fork lays down a weary doo-wop. The Coppertone girl rides a mule into a field of poppies.

Letters of Transit

DISCOUNT KARMA STORE
"You get what you pay for"

Strumming the Tide
The octopus has three hearts that
leak out thru its manifold
& set fire to the seaweed

"THE POEMS"
I own "The Poems"

The Sheik of Araby
1. Digging the breezes as they go
2. Counting horses on bingo night
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variations on a theme
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Let's don't & say we did

15 Seconds of Fame
All the little chosen ones
Google yr name

Never One to Drop the Dime

Beyond the heavy crash of waves
assume only the possibility

            brilliant blue gray silver fog
                               pages turning
                                          Mexican rock & roll

Memory of waking up beneath the Venice pier
it is as it was
            by reason, shame & reverence
                                           A Test of Poetry

Walking Tiptoe Thru the Ruins of Western Civilization (w/Headphones On)

The rolling dark rocking
deep green turquoise steel
& corrugated foam

which from here resembles the warped
pages of a water-damaged book
the inscription illegible
a map of veins that have burst within
a bouquet of suicide morning glories

but taking it an octave higher than
any dog-eared hymnal would ever recommend

like a black pajama death wish
on the slow train to the Hollywood Laundromat

Buried in Whispers

These streets belong to another place, another time, set on fire in the yellow tree as the story goes. One step in any direction & you're somewhere else entirely. The deciduous architecture is noted for windows that catch the light & toss it back, as well as for the lack of doorways. The sidewalks & alleyways are always dark, even at high noon on the longest day of summer. Foot traffic is sparse, passersby are mere shadows. I wouldn't even know that you were walking beside me now if not for your ritual string of pearls which seem to glow w/a pulse of muted neon, like the bioluminescence generated by creatures that live in the deepest, most remote parts of the sea.

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

Conflict Resolution Among the Mouth Breathers

She wanted to know the preliminary 
parts of whatever
empty rules of heaven
& though I was convinced it had
more to do w/coconut milk & tequila than
the Gnostic scriptures
I just couldn't see how she could
drive that truck all the way there & back
w/a leaky head gasket & no muffler
but like cutting forever in half
w/the sky behind smoked glass
& bongo windchimes knocking in the
late afternoon seabreeze
further is just about as far as you can go

To the Gods of Medicine & Ding Repair

A flicker of wings maybe
to float the memory
she used to say it that way
on the Avenida
beneath a tropic sky
the same color as 40 links of chain
w/mudslide tremors & gaited horses
out where the coast road veers off into
Bohemian rhapsodies
& the wingless per diem
often mistaken for a synthesis of
ocean fog & Lee Marvin
that random apprehension where
sea meets sky in the pretense & the vapor
doesn't necessarily ring a bell
anywhere but here