Predicting the tide

Three & a half birds on the high wire
& the song they sing like
Eric Dolphy meets Django Reinhardt
in a rainpuddle
on Front Street

My smog blue eyes tainted by
THE OCEAN BELOW
& the prevailing winds

My heart stained by the blood of orchids
perhaps, but still ringing up the zeroes
discovering something in the somber tone
I never carved in your alabaster breakfast

so adorned with footsteps as it was
content with the legend of parachutes
& spiritual abuse disguised as Himalayas

to open a door of torn paper
draped over the pale azure pressure chamber
& Japanese surf rarities floating like fingers
lost in a caress from which we provoke
these sordid blessings & the voracious discontent

of our sometime resolve

Outside the Drift

Your fingers are like hinges
without doors

raised in this vicinity
as were the Nocturnes
                              left like a tear in the
              rearview mirror
                                                (the legacy edition

a series of dreams as yet unresolved

a gullwing fadeaway

semi-clean with a decent bump to the surface

              There are stones that whisper
              underwater
                                                like flames

                              waves that speak a rainy esperanto

blades of sand that murmur along the shore
or up over the beach concrete

folded neatly over the horizon

dissolving in a mist of haze

like a pelican w/headlights
storming the edge
Our Lady of the Perpetual Swamp
              & Hammered Tin Nasturtriums
lifted, exposed
              stepped on outside the Moby Taco
as I light a seaweed cigarette
                              to your devout indifference
              when the moon splits in two
above the moist & midnight pavement

Mele Kalikimaka

My favorite xmas poem is by Robert
Creeley, from his book 30 Things―

XMAS POEM:   BOLINAS
All around
the snow
don’t fall.

Come Christmas
we’ll get high
and go find it.

Ocean Blues

The moan of a rusted harmonica
bending palm trees in the fog

A Hazard to Navigation

Cairo – You always have a very smooth explanation.
Marlowe – What do you want me to do, learn to stutter?

Up until now the way the rain
explains your seaweed
mascara
                              by means of an endlessness
              with dual exhaust
                                                & a deep blue yonder

as the alluvial counterweight
in capsule form
would endure such revision
              since anything that
                                                pure exceeds mere
                              redemption

The balance in trade to tip a hand
already played the risk inherent in
              the glittery parts I meant to steal
& meanwhile it’s still
raining as the tide slips away
                              & the coast road
              reels us in

Written on the Waves

The very place puts toys of desperation,
Without more motive, into every brain
That looks so many fathoms to the sea
And hears it roar beneath.
                        ―Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 4

Silver, emerald, & neon.   This time they’re real even as they dissolve & the moist aura that follows them unfolds.   You see I know.   I’ve been here before, & other places as well.   Each as empty as the other.   What you bring with you & what you leave behind.   When the smoke parted & you descended from the steel palisades I realized you probably were right.   All that unrecorded whomp & flutter, the fishhook cigarettes, the bended knees & cracked radiator hoses.   It’s just that simple & as long as we’re here we might as well pretend it’s where we were headed all along. No matter where we are I will always be exiled to a soundproof cathedral beach where the tide plays Topsy on a drainpipe & the light is always almost halfway gone.

Paint It Turquoise

I see a red door painted black
& a line of cars trying to find a parking spot
down near the pier
plus or minus the dogeared bootleg surf
I could strum with my eyes shut
Today I sold a copy of
How To Win Friends and Influence People
along with a copy of Helter Skelter
which I thought made a pretty nice combo
I never read the first book
which probably explains why I have no friends
& no influence
I did read all about Manson & had a couple of
bad dreams but I don’t think I ever
killed anyone & when I get to the
bottom I stay there
behind the wheel of a ’65 Ford Ranchero
my eyes like pins
stuck into a pair of voodoo RayBans

Saltwater Tango

A dark green occasion beneath
a second-hand grapefruit sky
steeped in heavy breathing
& a kind of bloodshot euphoria

just as when you flip a coin
I always call the darkside
faded slightly turquoise
a look-the-other-way leap
from your cadillac balcony

but to scroll thru
a long line of sunsets
& stagger beneath the rain
like wasted palm trees & Mexican clarinets

sunsets like pearls dissolving in gasoline

lit up the pavement & wet sand
before you turned away
w/eyes like undersea
to reconcile the distance

& the time it takes
inside the shattered chrome seepage
that torqued the beach
w/residual winterized cables
& wrecked veins
embalmed in damp manifestos

semi-tropical & hyperextended

designed to lull you past the coma
because a pair of fog-colored
sunglasses this morning plugged
you into a dime bag of silver linings

as these empty parking lots repeat themselves
so often in fact
& contrary to the haze
reminding me of what you never said
but understood

the way an inverted whisper
rakes the silence
like a ripple on the surface
of a puddle

at the bottom of the sea

He Gives It Up

I am slapped upside gutwrenching zeal
& epiphanies

as the sincere numbers of the heart
measure not abstraction merely but
blood & knuckles

yet with the altered light falling in thru the screen door
I swear you look like a ’56 Chevy convertible

parked in the rain