Big Olaf

Once, while sitting On a tide-surrounded Piece of Sunset Cliffs, I smelled boyhood, A summer scent: Warm sand, blue cool ocean, Seaweed, shells, swells, surf wax; Coconut tanning oil SPF 15. The silence of waves before they break, Bodyboard rash and sunburns, The sharp asphault places in the parking lots, Kicking sand on the backs [...]

Rioting Raindrops

The rain came down Like cartoon anvils, Spending itself on the cement In an assault on the town. The parachute-less troops Gathered in the low-lying spots And took over the streets In order to regroup. Rioting raindrops, Seething and churning, Swallowing curbs and sidewalks And the floors of a few shops. En masse, they moved [...]

Run to the Grunion Run

I ran across the street with a golden-haired girl to watch the grunion run. She’d never seen it before – I’d never touched one, always too scared – but for her I wrapped one in seaweed, careful not to touch its skin, and I returned it to my Mom, the ocean.

I Can’t Breathe

why can’t I just be another guy? but I’m a person with a snake-sharp tongue and I’m a ripped flannel… I shoot my mouth like a shotgun. riddles and rhyming and rhythm, not taken seriously enough to stay honest just another number in the GTE phone list. I lie and I lie and I lie [...]

Pennywise as a Lover

when I am away I know that I am in love with you, with salts and breezes from the ocean that would go well with your blonde hair, helium balloons for your big blue eyes, dripping sandcastles in the reflection of the sun on the sealskin sand of the tide on the beaches. and I [...]

Hush

you asked me once upon a time if I could hear the speech of the sea. I said yes and that was where are agreement ended; you heard eulogies, laments, cries of change and supportive flesh, the echoes of watery hands drumming on cliffsides, rolling rocks into its stomach, a maelstrom of creative fury controlled [...]

Dolphin Daughter

A dolphin explodes from the water because she is the daughter of the foam that is flipped from her grey tail flying skywards and seawards, spraying dents into the surface of the sea. she plunges back under the covers of the ocean to meet the others, dolphins which, not caught in tuna nets, are free.

One Chickenshit Poet

I can imagine the surf in my hair and the chill of the air, when I stand up from the water so I don’t go into the ocean. because I’m a lilly-livered chickenshit. I’ll walk down the cool tarry sand and pretend that I’m under a wave; trying to feel the slick water bead on [...]

Cliffs Look Good in a Certain Way

the most damnable thing is that I’m wistful, how it could have been; a cliff by the ocean, powdery earth and a fistful of the tough grass to keep me from falling into a grey-green sky; an ocean with waves and tarnished sparkles to lap at the leaden bluffs where I first remember dreaming of [...]

Seeing Green

I want you to see green the way that I see green in all of its fluorescence and grandeur: a lawn and a suit and a rain-clean forest in Hawaii fed by moss-strung waterfalls, frog skin and garden hoses and glow sticks, the bindings of books with gold letters, childrens’ animated watercolors; the hue and [...]

Fa the Baby

I want to keep you forever, Fa – you are a reminder of my wonderful history with her and you have never changed. you, covered in lasting kisses, big blue eyes made of waves and ocean breadths – you know where my spoon ring went.

Struck Dumb

sometimes things will strike me, strike me, strike me solid with a beautiful thought. I thought that all these things were really real but now I’ve blinked and they’re not. that’s just my lack of faith, of faith, of faith in what I truly believe. I believe in the movement of drums in this music [...]

Untitled Poem #143

sometimes it all comes full circle: a beautiful sky that you can’t see the end of in any direction; even the ocean mirrors me in its watery face. I believe in it all now, the magic of the things nobody sees, of the things children tell us; the wind remembering who I am.

I am Adopted

Adpoted, I adopt my own ideas About who my real parents really are. My mother; ocean and spring rain; the dew On grass stems sparkling, a field of stars: All water, blood that courses past my eyes. My father – rocks and wood and muddy bones, The mountains laid behind and raised before, All sturdy [...]

A Dream of a Ship

I sag into my bonds, bound to this wooden chair with water from my eyes six inches deep on the floor. I feel all alone on a ship gently rocking, back and forth, water rolling, sighing from bulkhead to bulkhead. my head is down and my hair is in my face but if I was [...]

My Mother in the Ocean

it is something, standing by the sea, feeling my heart and my blood fashioned rudely out of ocean-salt and the milk of beach-foam. I feel the pull of the moon on the tide standing here, examining the sky in the sheen of the wet sand, in the surface of the water. I smell the wet [...]

Untitled Poem #131

I slunk from the sea late last night to stand in a moon-dappled room under a broad-leafed tree to write these words from the ocean, dripping and streamered with ribbons of seaweed, leaving the smell of wet salt and wind behind for the forest whose paper this is.

Creature from the Black Lagoon

Geoff Stearns rose dripping from the ocean strung with seaweed and shaggy hair but without his glasses which the mermaids claimed for the memories.

Untitled Poem #-19

once upon a time I was a youth, no corpse dream thing, tiny and small, but I was as big as the world, bright and unbuttoned like metal. so anyways, I bend and I breathe. the sieve of my skin leaks the sand of my cloud life; strange clouds, odd clouds for people far away [...]

Imitations of Akahito

I the wet skirt of a salt girl looks a lot like maybe, a fruit roll-up. II the salt girl with the wet skirt is Madonna. I think of you always. III it is a pretty picture, but now this salty girl, whom you have thrown in the ocean with your poetry, must go change [...]

Untitled poem #-11

tonight as a dream of ocean, there is seaweed, a corsage on my wrist, sand in my nails; my window was open to the stars, mirrors to mad poetry.

Derivation of Philip Larkin: And the Wave Sings Because it is Moving

“And the waves sing because they are moving And the waves sing above a cemetery of waves.” the waves sing great Viking songs, full of mead and adventures in stormy seas, songs of lifting mighty dragon-prows across many leagues of untamed oceans, of bravery and of tales of distant lands, but deep in the midst [...]

Quick and Deadly

show me show me show me how you do that trick, the one that makes me scream she said, the one that makes me laugh she said, so I did I cut her head off and then I jumped up and down on it and then I threw it off a cliff into the ocean.

Leonidas #3

One ivy leaf do I sadly float upon the ocean in memory of you, who have retired in disappointment, disgusted and betrayed.

Untitled Poem #103

I can hear the sound of the ocean as I float in my sea of whipped cream sheets. the wind in the trees outside my window calls me softly to sleep.