Kevin Opstedal

 

Baja Depth Charge

wind shaking dried thistle, dead grasses

dry creekbed culvert stones bleached white in the sun

mid-summer or mid-winter, take your pick . . .
waking up in California
the seeming Hail Mary of the
                                             last rays of light
             jumping off the blue horizon

I forgot to say gracefully

Everything falling into place according to the laws of
a random feng shui
                                   lamp flicker a signal
             an organic call & response

like the meaning of heartbreak
raking the sand as at Ryðan-ji

They tell you that each grain of sand has it's place
                          & yes I'm sure that it does but
           where exactly might that be?

 

Midnight Glass

High-yield doom & rain revisited
like in your knees
                                    but diffuse in a sea of violet,
turquoise & vermilion
the way Odysseus saw it but forgot to mention
I suppose
                          standing on the jetty talking to himself

& the fogmist lifting off the waves there
silent as a big diesel downshifting on a 30% grade

somewhere inside your head

It figures you'd concede the darkness
knowing or hoping that it's only temporary

thrust forward as a kind of challenge
in the echoing stillness of night

 

If you could rationalize it

Return from work to find
fresh air, prophesy, green
plumes & pink hydraulic flowers
                                                as in a dream where
                         every day is Tuesday
                                            morning in Calcutta

trying to get as far away from
myself as possible
without leaving the room

              offer up a live chicken, some beads,
                                  the gear stick from a '40 Ford
                       & a box of rubber bands
              on a lonely stretch of the PCH
                                             just like St. Augustine . . .

The tools of my resurrection include
a book on metalurgy & a can of black
spray paint (rust-o-leum)

 

Think Again

Silk, amber, incense, dope?

"Once is enough but maybe we should try one more time
just to be sure"

The hard cold truth of constellations & tide charts
if we were to walk out to the edge of all this
I wonder if we could

She said that I was transparent then she
tried to knee-cap me while I slept

long past midnight / in the rain / financially

 

Pieces

The wind picks up late & I
have to re-evaluate the landscape
one more time
                         to factor in the
withering of the heart
              Chinese bells & used engine parts

black palm fronds on River Street
                          I mistook for wings one night

               parking lots crumbling in the surf

so rare (pure) no matter what the
textbooks say

                          The acoustic version
now playing
              in the veins
              in your wrist

 

Japanese Title

The light is just too heavy here
                                     nobody asked you but
green & iridescent
The placement of which you understand
is by definition habitual

light radiating up out of the ground

although "It has been raining forever," etc.

all streams, rivers & storm drains empty onto the beach
no imagination whatsoever
                                                is by definition like
               seagulls circling the Safeway parking lot
& my heart in slow motion

much too heavy to get that high

 

With the Lights Out

Love itself the equal
& this we are the reflection
only a glimpse of what's possible
is lifted (that brilliance) to be
merely the occasion

or drawn into the vanishing point
the idea I thought was a polished surface
& catch myself again at the fluttering center
of what starkly abstract notion

then as now may lead us to an other
we know not of but implicit
makes each horizontal bend around the premise
driven like a truck
over a cliff
(hubcaps gleaming)

 

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