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Ode to the West Coast

Endless on my breath is the Ocean!

Too easy the inspiration surges

As Her

Foamy fingers speed toward me


I scream I love you I love you I love you

As She

Washes the grief from my eyes

And the guilt from my hands,


Naked in the shingles of the world

Roaring through my dullen memories.


I am alive again,


O Salt, you are my skin

O Water, you the blood


Deafening thud of absolution

That is day in day out

Drowns my vocal chords,

High and wild


I am empty bliss

- No

I am mindless joy

- The internal opposite


The real; drear and ecstatic


I am dancing in your breakers,

A twirling Venus,

Hearing heartbeats

Across molecules

Holding a vast tempest,

An instant of aching relief

Which sets me adrift in the wake

Of the lonely, cool moonlight


Have I grown cruel?

(“all my unhappiness is you”)


Tendrils boil about my thighs -

I fall to my knees

In despairing meditation.

Hissing, as She retreats

In disapproval;

Her reaction is just

And I listen.


Tipping curves reveal

Her glinting smile

Flashing rapturous sinistry

Into neat, glittering reflections

In the corners of my eyes.

Dried out,

I become a fountain of dust,

Impervious to bitterness,

Carried in the slap of the wind,

Alive and everywhere.



🎨/📷 by Mark Rothko, Untitled (Green over Blue), 1956

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