Waitin’ for the Vaccine Blues

 

As if in auto-

Citation, San Francisco

Calls up some wind

And a little fog

Today.

 

                        My mind

Wanders in empty fields

Of Covid time, end-

Less and finite

As a lost dog.

 

                        I walk

Where the traffic lights

Bid me and Alamo Square

Is where I sit

 

And where San Francisco

Writes itself

Into my note-

Book.

 

                        Half a million

American souls

Know it’s true.

 

 

 

                                    2/2/2021

                                    Alamo Square, SF

 

 

Worse than Ozymandias

Nothing says fuck you

quite like a castle.

it stands there

daring you

to fuck with it,

to assail

its unassailable heights

,its unreachable ramparts,

but no matter

how many castellani

you manage to kill,

the castle remains.

And when it’s yours,

your own conquered

fuck you

rising from the earth or the sea

as far into the sky

as any human construction,

you’re trapped in it

until the next barbarian

comes along

,takes it from you,

and locks himself

in its dank

dungeons.

7/21/2020

Naples

 

Castel Sant'Elmo in Naples. Angevin, built around 1275.

Hymn to Partenope

Partenope, predatory

as any earthly creature

,who all must eat,

omnivorous and unable

to fish—her bird wings got in the way

of the wire—created the art

of singing. To snare a man. Any man.

Not for loving—

she sang of other matters

of poverty perhaps, or camaraderie,

or the moonlight on the turbulent sea

—anything but romance, anything but love.

For she and her two sisters

had grown tired of poking their beaks

into the dirt, of grubbing

for scraps, and the island

was too rocky to plant. Anthropologists

confirm civilization impossible

under such circumstances.

            Not even Circe’s

Resources—a hut, a stall,

or the power of magic

to protect them, the sirens

did all that they could do.

Until Odysseus undid it all.

This is how my city was born in blood

And death and singing.

7/20/2020

Naples