A Valentine

“Her body is the shape of my hands.”

–Paul Eluard

My Galatea, smooth and warm

as sandstone against her palms

,firm fingers caressing,

sculpts me each and every

day with her curved and slender

presence. Venus has no auguries

,neither pearl nor rose, to prove

if I were worthy of her chisel

against my stony heart

not yet come to the apex

of the wheel.

2/14/2011

Florence

House Hunting

The Prodigal's Chair has just published the opening tale of Poison and Antidote in their "House & Home" issue. It's called, oddly enough, "House Hunting" Check it and them out--a great publication straight outta Boston. 

In My Role as the Most Hated Poet on Facebook

(with apologies to Mark Eitzel)

In my role as the most hated
poet on facebook, I've met
a lot of well-web-presenced
discourse holders

whose feelings were far more
precious than mine, whose opinions
,right as rain, (when the fuck
was rain ever right?) illuminated
me with immensities

of the ego
of the solitary midnight
poster, nothing better to touch
than the keys,
opening up worlds of potential
space, expanding universes
of I, me, mine.

I prefer the kid
from South Carolina who posted
on my YouTube video simply this:
"Stupid. Gay."

Brevity, you know,
is the soul of wit.



1/12/2016
Florence

J. de Salvo over at the Oakland Review blog has written a review of my new collection of San Francisco Bohemian tales from the Reagan era, Poison and Antidote. Check it out.

 

 

From Florence to "Frisco"

Fail-safe sun, bridges

and layers of time.

Wariness—we’re not all

Sweethearts here, either.

Rather cautious, taciturn.

“Shining our little flashlights

in your face.” Bay people,

peninsula people, half in,

as if poker were

our sport, sport.

One foot in noir

and the other

a surfer boy.

“You can’t be

from California,” she told me

a long time ago,

“you’re not blonde.”

7/30/2015

San Francisco

Marine Layer

An eerie rayon rhino madly

rams any yellow armor,

airs his dry rinds

down here. Night falls

heavy on San Francisco.

6/15/2015

San Francisco

Photograph by Debra A. Zeller.

The Brautigan Streets

I close my eyes and try to walk the Brautigan streets of San Francisco, knowing full well that they’ve been sold to Silicon Valley for some time. It all started when they knocked down the oldest bar in town to build a prison block of cement condos as part of the Coca-Cola ballpark for that baseball team that no one had ever heard of before they accidentally won the World Series. Now they accidentally win the World Series every other year.

            Still, I can only sigh at San Francisco’s protracted suicide. Sadness and trespass and pride. And my own worst emotional flaw, nostalgia. Brautigan left me the streets but I did nothing to keep them clean. I expected poverty to do it for me, to put up more of a fight. But San Francisco, too, was complacent, unconcerned, and weak. Even now, it’s probably looking the other way while its pockets get picked once again.

2/24/2015

Bologna