ANEMONE OF THE STATE
the sea (all those parts pooled into one)
upheaves and twists long rocks
like dirty shirts
on the beach.
i jump over the laundry,
balancing on a collar
before slipping
into the wash.
the seagulls fell back to earth
like water rockets
in sex death arcs,
thick Cheshire grins
possessing me before
forgetting everything
and returning
to the salty meat in the shells,
and the briny grit of sugar kelp
the white sky sank.
i squinted through the silk smoke,
through the silhouette
of kite strings
and imagined a paratrooper
falling through a grand piano
a keyboard mouth
a pedal to sustain the wind
the hush of white sand
dusted off the shore
a devil on a floating carnival
riding the waves and waving
from the calliope
“open slowly,” he hisses.
even his charring croak subject to the Doppler shift
even his charging limbs slave to gravity
even his charming stare skulled in heartbreak
“i don’t remember you. i never remember you.”
Then maybe it snows or the sea is ladled into a Tupperware bowl or a sleeved forearm wipes
away the day, leaving the impatient raw nerve of tomorrow, or the sea grows an eggshell skin,
mottled like a bluebird’s, or rises up in columns, then collapses like a kennel…
when i was younger, i wrote ad copy for the new york city tourism board.
a final submission saw me banished to the far west
I MISSED THE MIST ON THE MOUNTAIN
I could wait
for that marine layer on the Orange Coast
that burns down each morning
like a schoolyard parachute
For now, I turned off the gray recorder
to absorb the world
outside my head.
I missed those chickens scratching
the soil above the pet cemetery,
Chipper rolling in the brown grass,
Chief Joseph nipping my denim heels,
Moseying through the hidden country of the Wolfman.
Wine at five on the red slippery
James Dean in the hall
Careful chords quietly hammered on the white piano
A time-lapse of my wife in the picture frames
Then returning to the valley
loud voices layered like
rainbow cookies
vulgar asides, double entendres
coffee, natch
fingerprints in contrast to consignment dust
the must of record sleeves
the hunt, the discovery, the whittling down
quiet evenings on the couch
the warm resurrection of old acquaintances
simple mysteries of harnessed drama
We often I think serve as
memory vessels
full-body thumb drives
We are I think
pendulums to be one day stilled by time
A MESSAGE FROM BLAKEY
Art Alamode on a winter afternoon
a warm winter day, cooled
by the Santa Anas
so I’m playing jazz in January
with the windows open and
it feels like a summer night
in the dead of the winter
which is no winter
when you’re in California
These days shout California
the palm trees bend
to my ear and side-mouth
an I-told-ya-so
and I agree and concur
this is the California of
pamphlet and promotion
on all dimensions of screen
and the music doesn’t hurt either
A message from Blakey
Benny’s honeysuckle
Samba with Hawkins
misery & company
go bankrupt on days like these
flop like cats, slouch like me
it’s magic the way the wind
slips under these white pages
on my desk
I work easier when the
weather comes in, I don’t
need to dream of outside
(or scream inside)
some winter, huh?
temporal, tropical
(a brush of bebopical)
the best drugs
can’t be bought
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