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

 

 

INAUGURATION DAY

 

The day the fascists took Wash-

ington, it was night

in Rome, where I hid

in a rented house in Tras-

tevere, certain rooms locked—

because I could never afford

it all. I ran into Rosanna

,a good egg, and we didn’t speak

of the end of the world as the hope

,fighting against all odds for eight

complacent years, took two steps

back in five minutes. For

“No man’s fuck is holy

because man’s work is most war.”

                        Is good really so relative

its works can be blown away

in an instant in the winds of wrong?

                        I guess wrong knows

all the tricks—from open carry

to concealed weapon.

                        And right

is the bells ringing across Rome

this morning, signaling the loss

,again, of a good man gone down.

                        1/20-21/2017

                        Rome

"The Scrovegni damnation"

The Scrovegni damnation

suspended, the chapel

I will not see this morning;

crisp, fall, Padovan

foschia and revolution.

A kneeling dog

Before the museum.

Religion of the elite

who keep churches

as churches

once kept relics.

“Boys keep swingin’,

boys always work it out.”

Kidnapped that girl

because her father

,a Vatican official,

who, no doubt,

don’t give a shit

about this Roman amphitheater,

but did something nasty

to somebody...

                        Despite

power we do things

and consequences

fall on women

                        we conceive

of as other, as ours, as

a social commodity.

The Scrovegni loaned

                        money

and we paid interest

at the Vatican bank

in blood.

                                    10/1/2016

                                    Padova

Another cool, gray San Francisco day

,July, toward the end of the world.

I will never see clearly again

except through glass. I’ll

walk ‘til my legs give out, I suppose,

looking hard at the outside of things.

Love will be my mantra

‘gainst all this American suspicion, hate,

and self-repression. By tomorrow

you’ll have forgotten you ever read this

but I’ll remember that you did.

I’m the archivist of nothing in particular.

July, 5^th, 2016

San Francisco

San Francisco II

Although it’s all visually familiar

the city only

                        feels like home

In the Tenderloin.

                                    Leavenworth St.’s “got

that home beat,” that

Je ne sais quoi

                        on the edge

of desperation. Transsexual

with a laptop on the sidewalk

purse open: smokes, blankets,

and that smell bathrooms

                                                were built

to neutralize.

                        Sometimes places

are hard to get to because

they’re even harder to get out of.

This lowlife

                        misses

                                    the camaraderie

                                    of abject survival. After all,

smiles are brighter

                                    against

                                    your suburban misery,

                                    Mr. Jones—

where it all happens without you

and my head is the only

                                                incongruity,

since all the places it carries around

only bring me home 

to the cool, gray city

                                                of love.

June, 2016

San Francisco

With Apologies to Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle into that old minimum wage,
Old age should burn and rage at close of workday;
Rage, rage against the insufficiency of the wage.

Though wise ones know a proper wage is sage,
Because Democrat words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that old minimum wage.

Good workers, the last wave by, crying how to gauge
Their frail deeds of labor danced in a green workway,
Rage, rage against the insufficiency of the wage.

Wild ones who taught GOP speech to asuage,
learned, too late, and grieved legislation on its way,
Do not go gentle into that old minimum wage.

Grave workers, near 6 PM, who see with blind outrage
their interests blaze like meteors and be tossed away,
Rage, rage against the insufficiency of the wage.

And you, my father, there on the sad payday,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce Republican tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that old minimum wage.
Rage, rage against insufficiency of the wage.

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 Art of Combustion

Plain as the stone on your face.

Row your safety to napalm

notes, afraid as flame shrinking

from water ‘n’ crackling for air.

                                    There is a life

in chemical reactions. Raw materials

colliding, combusting, and accruing

sedimentary corrosion.

                                    Moving elements collide,

redefine neutrons in an atomic closet, abide

in particle performances and material matters—

The touch

                        Of Mark Pauline’s fingers,

caught between machines

and the nature of unstable

science’s elemental tenements,

                                     both positive

and negatively charged.

                        1/2015

                        Florence

"Glare of shoosh"

Glare of shoosh,

Din of protest, personal

and urgent, meaningless

shrieking babies. They know

life is miserable. But we learn

to smile, learn to love the living

hell in our loins, the dull ache

of solitude in the circle

of those who claim to have our back

and tell us we are not

fat. I am a fat fuck

,on an airplane, dreaming

of skewering the tiny larynx

of a baby with a prickly

plastic fork—unrepentant.

5/29/2015

Munich-San Francisco, in transit

Survived By

Heart strap

thread of renewal

blood through a mucus membrane

stop. it don’t stop

thread through a needle’s eye

wet throng of need

don’t ever stop

need, the relative

            pronoun implying possession

            Demons

in the boom box

strung over shoulders

resent rhythms

life’s train

            don’t derail

            dare not stop

            taking ways

            away.

                                    9/14/94

                                      NYC

"The view"

The view:

A point

Of turpitude

Repatriate

Papal

Perception. Heightened

Urban

Guerrilla / Indian

Visits the Vatican

Museum

A stylish

Middle-aged

Telefonino

--

Unburdened

W/ doom

At dawn

Occhio!

Nighttime

Animals

Egotism

Disaffected

In mission:

Existential

Anachronism’s

Agenda

And away

                        We go.

3/20-21/2015

Rome

"Au-delà"

Au-delà

There / not there

The word of place

Locus located

Tales collated in Lotus

Land, related

To others as in a grammar—

Locution forgetting particular

Placements for continuities

Associations inter coining

Phrases nor ever setting

Faces read through clouds

Moving across an interior sky

3/21/2015

Rome