After the reading...

...we picked up some BBQ, & Pamela snapped this picture.

Let it Bleed

Half a moon hanging in the sky

Is it waning or waxing?

Allow me to consult the Chinese calendar

& the tide book

                           & that look in her eyes

Reading east to west:

bamboo, Los Sinners, a leap from the pagoda roof

into the ocean below

                        circled by air, murder & other

extravangant technologies…

                                    eye of the Dragon         tooth & nail

The alchemy of the midnight tide

            or the stained glass catching fire at sunset

                                    same difference

“Ain’t it a shame” the Medicine Man used to say

speaking of atomic theory

accelerated particles yakking it up as the music plays

like flying saucers getting dizzy

the invasion postponed

Photographic Evidence: Live Oak Library 8/23

Reading in Santa Cruz, Friday, August 23

• Reading by poet Kevin Opstedal
• Interactive photo booth
• Wine and light appetizers
• Books and broadsides by the poet will be available for purchase

Live Oak Library, 2380 Portola Drive, Santa Cruz, CA.
Phone: 831-427-7711.

The way the deal went down

Sometimes the mist drifts by like a great whale

other times it’s more like a Martian landing party

at Oxnard Shores

burning oil on the road to the land of the dead

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

future beach front property if the Mayans were right

            Wind rippling thru the venetian blinds

            w/ trouble in mind blues imitating Samoa

                                                while a ghost thing like love

                        tosses shadows like spare change across the

                                    sidewalk outside the Kung Fu Taqueria

representing something that must remain casually unresolved

locked away where the seabreeze goes

when it isn’t here...

            A southwest swell building in overnight          

            I can feel it in my knees

            The dawn’s first light / a match struck

                                                on beach pavement

& then the mist & the silk & the neoprene

w/plumes of adrenalin like gasoline

setting fire to the kelp grove

            in advance of the full-rail cutback

            boiling ocean poppies

            the name of the morning sky

Dropping in on a floater

Ocean water sloshing

up against the curved inner walls

of the skull

It doesn't remind me of what I've become

anymore than a guitar w/a broken neck
searching for the cantilever section of
Between the Devil & the Deep Blue Sea
as performed by Dick Dale & the Del-tones

The octopus wears dark sun-
glasses
              obviously a disguise bent
over backwards on Walking Crucifixion Day

I mean flush w/beer money

& trading lies for kisses

My mind is like a ‘68 Chevy Malibu

busting a U-ey in the middle of the 405

& my heart is the B-side of Louie Louie

played with a broken needle

on one of those old portable set-ups you

might find at a thrift shop

if you look hard enough

No End in Sight

Angels or demons

I don’t think it makes any difference

wings out-stretched

inside the wind (as prescribed)

“Who’s dream is that?” 

                                                           This

is another.

            Gargoyles tumbling in thru the bedroom window

            clutching harpoons & ropes of seaweed

                        The Yield & the Occurrence

                                    significant only in the derivative

                                    surf-o-rama.

How Green is My Africa

aloe vera  /  bougainvillea

I could re-phrase all this so that you’d know excatly

what I’m talking about, but

what fun is that?

Sparks flying off the lip of the curl

subliminal, & green

The Fujiwara Effect

She was wearing mules

the shoes not the animals

altho for a minute there I had this vision…

but then the wind turns & she turns w/it

the pavement surging beneath the sand

“California style” she said, but

I wasn’t convinced

Occasionally the algae blooms

& the fish die washing up on the beach

like silver spoons

We do the tango to waltz music

followed by the hully gully, the twist,

the watusi, & every ripple

in the evening tide

ending in a seaslug duckwalk

right off the end of the pier

El Tarantula

I woke up in

                                    Bolinas or Sumatra

            w/Tibetan rap music pulsing in the woodwork

                        blue sky hopping the curb

& the descending tides

            slowly shifting colored light set alongside the

samurai plunge

            Absinthe & Digitalis

                        The Oracle of Del-Fi

                                    Omega Strings & Slipknots

            tilted in the transcendental seabreeze

                                                cutting a deal with Medicine Buddha

& the smoke laying out sideways was more than enough to

think about between gulps of seawater

& kerosene

                        it all turns to glass in your dreams

yet the memory remains

pounding on a beached piano wired for silence

            A catchy little number

                                    but can you dance to it?

Two-Tone Chilean Winter

BENDER

Deep in a swoon (or a swoop?)

on a bender…

CHINATOWN          

 “It’s okay, buddy, it’s

Chinatown”

CONVICTS

Nuggets of black tar smuggled out in

the chop suey like hacksaws for convicts

ESCAPE

In both senses then to facilitate an escape

MIRROR

Tunneling thru the mirror

TIME

Blue eyes bleached by the sun & sea-mists of time

WISER?

The eyes of the pelican are darker perhaps wiser?

TUNE

On a subsistence level I guess I’m

whispering your tune

FLOATER

It’s best not to think when you’re dropping in on a floater