I found the root bug, I think, flagged by this message:
scheme@(guile-user)> (define-tokenizer tokiz ("[a-z]+" #\a))
While compiling expression:
ERROR: build-constant-store: unrecognized object #<procedure make-regexp (_ . _)>

I was putting procedure-objects in the macro when I should have been putting in syntax.

works:
  (list
   (datum->syntax (car cz) 'make-regexp)
   (string-append
    "^" (syntax->datum (car cz)))))

broken (but worked in guile 1.8.8):
   (list
    make-regexp 
    (list string-append "^" (car cz))))


Matt