Like Driving to Chinatown for Tacos

Seafoam, Sand & a Sky Crushed with Clouds
Part of the repertoire of a sunset
distantly in which
all I had was yours

Less Than a Mile from Here it All Turns to Glass
A dime bag of silver linings reduced to 3 chords that
rattle in the palm leaves when the wind shifts

A Blue So Pale It Tastes Pure White
Drifted out beyond the point, left in the
backseat of a stolen Corvette, buried
out near the tideflats, translated into
church Latin, tattooed on her shoulder

Shredding the Opulent Ocean Air
You're knocking at the backdoor of my heart
& I'm fading like a sunset in another time zone
my eyes like pins stuck into a pair of voodoo RayBans

A Guide to Underwater Photography

Excavating the protocols of redemption
excluding leadweight epiphanies in the green room

striding through the alakazam beach grass & seaweed
the world in a tidepool diorama

& like an emotional response
set alongside a prophetic socket wrench
the wind spoke a fluent Spanglish
understood by eucalyptus trees above the beach

The real work is done in dreams
the way your eyes change color & you turn your head away
& I'm trying to make sense out of
messages scrawled in lipstick on the pavement

actionable evidence of good intentions gone awry
the dust that never settled & the loaded dice

This space in time, this focus, of articulation & where that might take you

Shady gray radiance
& damp at first light
sidewalks splashed in silver

            as a way to reverse engineer the ocean haze

& like the Ten Commandments in a gorilla suit
            knocking at the screen door
a 12-string seabreeze serenades cypress & eucalyptus
            spent dreaming still so by their restlessness

                        w/all the requisite shadows in place

I had to reach back into my archive of auditory hallucinations
to find the right tone & pitch but the sky wasn't right for
that kind of self-incrimination

Except for the sound of waves the beach was quiet
            & the drumroll sand was like Mexican silk
                        driven beneath the foam

Some Reviews of PACIFIC STANDARD TIME

Michael Dennis in Today's Book of Poetry

Mike Sonksen in Entropy

Elaine Equi on the Poetry Foundation's Harriet blog
(You have to scroll down a bit to find Equi's mini-review)

William Mohr on the Poetry Loves Poetry blog

This is How We Talk to Each Other Now

Where I am in time I wonder where
you might be         this side of the full moon
or that

Reality is too cumbersome & has been forever
unmasking the existential diatribe

"Excuse me"  "Is that you?"  "Be quiet"  "Don't go"
"Listen"

folded in half now like a blank sheet of paper

& talking to you on the phone in a dream
it was a bad connection I couldn't hear you
static cutting in & out

"That's funny, I can hear you just fine"

The future of one moment vs the future of the next
already packed into the big Cadillac of the past
that never stopped to pick me up that summer afternoon
hitchhiking on the PCH

& later I'm on Agate Beach at dawn
skipping stones across puddles
at the bottom of the sea

                                                                  April 19, 2017

Raking the Valves & Hinges

"All the vibes hit me different"
- Joanne Kyger, Trip Out & Fall Back

The tide all drizzled in tinsel & mist

It's springtime on the coast

            The seabreeze
                        full of sighs
                                    & accumulated loss

                        the memory of which is
                                    rippling in the eucalyptus

I thought to roll up my 
            sleeves but the light had been
                        encrypted
                                    & my tattoo didn't translate...

The hazy blue sky is tilted at a 45 degree angle
which makes sense if you don't think about it

                        & you're tapping at the glass
                                    asking if they can turn up the volume

as a hummingbird pauses
            above the torch aloe

                                    just hovering there like
                                    Eternity         revving its engine

March 29

Something Joanne Told Me

"There are 4 voices in your poems
            but there should be at least 8
                        & one of them should be mine"

from GOD NEVER DIES by Joanne Kyger

Little shrine to JEK