Sweet Gail's Castle

a Greyhound waltzes along the Pacific Coast,
on steaming black squid-inked tar, settling easily
besides static pulse-death ocean crests.
the morning sun pungent with burning smells,
is reclined behind Big Sur standing away at dawn,
jogging loose sand with its disturbing motor.

roads are not stern in my squatting rickshaw,
nor does exhaust infection burn 
before it floats off shore.
feelings are thick like crushed velvet;
eyes in heads and arms of chairs.
Gail wants her thrills away from the office,
my radio mind tuned into her highness coughing.

the way is the way around every turn.
the tank is disturbed as the road leads on.
this wayfarer's red loin torn by middling
gamblers in games of pinkie-cross casinos,
besides themselves in games of duel losers; 
me and my lady at pinball machines of the mind,
flipping.

with Gail blows you drop your woes
and touch her glittering eyelids.
Gail warns she will be man-less, 
but loving nevertheless.
like jade touchstones seen in occasional foggy dreams,
in darkness is all she will caress, 
transitive nightfall cracking illusions,
causing tape-mouth three a.m. loneliness
between two of the same address.

terminals now lost as the bus runs to all old stations.
a man from the castle set a ball rolling, and vanished. 
Greyhound walks gingerly, knowingly, 
travelling rickshaw boy, paid, moves to first thoughts,
but his jewel box stays in safe deposit,
in the night, the search becomes frantic,
so i whisper in her ear:

"sweet Gail, the feeling comes, 
and i must write of your love,
you, like the doves of a half-time show,
in geometric dances let to fly out of eyes go
to shadowed distant corner of surprise.
you, who came to me through fossil caves,
dark like bats, with marks on neck forgotten.

your tiny beads, scattering everywhere,
rolling off your string.
i am bound to discover new globes
at three a.m. glimpses of silhouette
that pass through my mind in the day, transparently.
you are the four letter of love;
the mother earth to whom i will return. 
under your spell, weeds shall grow. 

you are Krishna on the shoreline playing a lute.
you like Cleopatra's seven jewels shining,
telling us separately you love each the most...
i believe you can do,
i felt you coming,
how could you slip from my caress?
i see it now, in the early morning,
the new day dawning
without a clue of how it will rise again."

"stay on board," Gail says, 
"for the route to the castle is set.
how many luxuriant rooms are on the hill?
this place has coordinates you must forget.
this place has styles from many long agos;
medieval, renaissance, English and French, 
and Spanish monks of inquisition.
be like Hurst to use your likes,
gather love for mother, 
before the picnic turns into the castle,
and a thing impossible to destroy." 

    










San Francisco, May 6,1978
& San Simeon, December 29, 1978
edited August 9, 2016