Demolition Derby

There is a palm tree outside the window here
full of dark & light     
whispering (green) & slowly
in the late October
afternoon dusted w/silver haze
so the message gets thru          encrypted            like her shoulders
which are bare white miracles darkened by the sun.
 
She is the one who hesitates an instant (to be sure) the
letters to & from
as the powder blue sky tumbles above the jetty
& shadows hold their breath now that everything is broken
 
DESIRE is a needle in the sand, she said,
her eyes glistening like tidepool mirrors
 
taken away by the shimmer of heat dissolving
in the grip of pavement that eventually will
crumble into the sea & road maps will be useless…
 
I’ll examine the veins in her wrist instead
 
planning our escape

I slept thru the best part

The roadside ferris wheel & opium vendors with
trouble in mind blues tipping the pagoda stool

Flashy shadow-boxing dance moves on a high-wire cathedral belt

 

I’ve painted my way out of so many corners I’m color blind

 

A wind went by just now

it had traveled across the vast Pacific
sprinted over the beach at Cowell’s & up Ocean Street
stumbled thru a few palm trees here on Wipeout Avenue
& continued on out to Donner Pass I guess
future beach front property if the Mayans were right
 

Dreaming by TV light

black & white footage, I could only tell you
what I thought it meant reflecting the uneven silver glow
the trees lit up with small birds accelerating

Something there is that rings a bell

180 degrees of fitful silence echoing in a seashell

I said that I prefer to sleep wearing sunglasses
& a big straw hat

“If you want a poem find a blank page”

 (Philip Whalen said that)

Singing in the Wires

I could be standing at the screendoor
asking for something easy

but it never is

                        or if it was they’d find a way to

package it & I’d still be paddling thru the shallows
waiting for the tide…

(From the outside)             looking                      out

2 eyes, 2 hands, one split-level heart

dedicated to beams of sunlight
money for nothing
flakes of rust that gather in a corner of the sky

& there is a reason why we open the windows half-way each

morning only to close them half-way each night

all summer long when the seaweed is in bloom

It will never leave us when it goes

& love is not a dream returning

No Matter How You Slice It

In the middle of the street, far out at sea, at the
intersection of Africa and Beach Flats
tomorrow, or the day after
shattered, distracted, standing by the gate that once betrayed a
husk of roses in the evening fog, the sunlight slanting in

I meant to say nasturtiums & the rattling
of metallic palm leaves
easily mistaken for the last scene of Hamlet
or Reservoir Dogs

Sand pushes past the horse latitudes

We drove there like Mayakovsky

or Su Tung-p’o in a late model Chevy
with 4 bald tires & a cracked cylinder head
burning oil on the road to the land of the Dead

Sometimes the mist drifts past like a great whale

other sometimes it’s more like a Martian landing party
at Oxnard Shores.

Standing by the gate.  Spiked kool-aid.  Dark sun glasses.

A t-shirt.  White.
Fluttering in the dark.

Chinese weather.

Variable High Cloudiness

I get the news from the

beach sand that settles into cracks

in the pavement

            the wind leaning against the seawall

                                    a cascade of nasturtiums

                        falling thru smashed windows in the ocean’s rush

The midnight sun at noon

is shimmering in snake games on the sidewalk

& you can see your reflection in the

silver-green ripple sound of eucalyptus

(you & I

thinking this)

It has to do with balance

the inner ear listening to something else entirely

thunder folded into foam

             emerald & chrome

raw strands of burnt kelp

            methadone inside your underwater ballet

& this is where your heart knocks to break

as if it was me tapping at the glass

I'm in training

A banana & bacon sandwich for breakfast

A carne asada burrito from the taco wagon at lunch

9 bottles of beer & 13 cigarettes, por favor

A point break, smooth and glassy

The poems of Catullus

Now You See It, Now You Don’t

Fog & sun, alternating
a deep white blue haze
incandescent, translucent
an orchid made of galvanized steel
& beach glass
offered to Our Lady of the Vanishing Point
morning glory
Miles Davis
at Malibu
circa 1957
in the wayback machine

bleached waves wash
across the drumroll sand

& I'm watching spiderwebs bend at 4:32 PM

God pointing to his watch

popping bubbles with a feather

Half a Dime

Between the pavement & the ocean sky
              just steps from where the coast
                              road cuts its sectioned asphalt bleached
by the sun & fogs & vibroned tire treads
              of who knows how many cars and trucks
                              careening into the mist
we parked & stumbled to find a steep
              crooked sandy trail
                                                down from panoramic cliffs

              intervals of rusty eucalyptus
                              gargling the seabreeze
                                                                like a flooded carburetor

                              A neat pile of regurgitated fishbones
                              in the center of the path
                              like a nest of crystals in the sun

Another time I lost my sunglasses here

                                                inside mineshafts of raw pacific steel

                              between the spanking cold & the damp

so that I had to blink to remember my name
& offshore breezes whispered so deciduously into the vast
unobserved platitude of ocean haze
something that was indicated or that could only be read upon the rusted dashboard dials of a derelict Buick
rotting & sunken
decapitated in a ragged seaside vacant lot
adjacent to the tideflat
as in ancient crime scene photographs where detectives stand
& a uniformed patrolman points
the lurid implication of what lies hidden in the weeds

              but in the sand gravel parking lot
              where the pavement gleams wetly out of the past
              seems set like a jewel in the last stretch of land before
              the heaving Pacific
                                                swept in red sunset turquoise
              drizzled in the milk of alleyways purpled w/blood or mist
                              swamped in a brown corner by Rembrandt
              with simple manifestations of allegorical contingencies
                                                trembling like a drop of dew in anticipation
              maybe Golgothas & la luz de Oriente
                              flying in off the lip of the Pacific
              night & day crashing the sunburned sidewalk
              the sky rocking back on its heels

                              between the dancer & the dance

              waiting for the tide to wrap in around the jetty

                              drifting
                                                                half your life at least
                                                the half you can still remember

              & it was like silk or aluminum out there
at that depth & from the rolling surface tension lifted
shallow roses & a deeper gloom than all your Topangas
                              shrouded in smoke & mist of Aztec or
                                                Abyssinian origin but with hula girls
tragic on a sand road in the lemon dusk
              vacant & inexcusable except for the
                                                way their hips move & the rustling of
                              grass skirts like the rainy cape of pneumatic
                              kelp groves rocking underwater to the
                                                                swoop & dazzle of ocean tides
              counting one-1,000 / two-1,000 / three--
              until you get there
              the sum total of the ground upon which you stagger
              & the bubbling under

Drawn Blank

For Pope Benedict XI & Bill Berkson

A seagull wheels & pivots in the sky
describing the arc of a compass

a prayer-wheel windchime
racking up the zeroes

a roundelay

a self-devouring hula hoop
                                                rolling downhill

I don’t know, Bill, what else?

                              a bubble in a mile of milk?

something concentric like Kandinsky
singing
                              doo-wah-ditty-dum
ditty-doom

& standing outside the Del Taco in Ventura
on Chinese New Year
                                                                in the rain
Giotto dips his brush in red
paint
                                                & in one continuous stroke
                              draws a perfect circle