From the Road

"San Francisco"

A wintery wind blows
crumpled newspaper
past graffiti-defaced pastel apartments.
There is dirt in the cracks.
God is in the details.
The city rolls on,
steep hills
that seem to be trying to shake it off
like a bronco bucking at a rider.
The city is beset on all sides
by timeless crags
that perch like Raptors
waiting to reclaim what was theirs.
Homeless people line the streets.
One for every doorway.
When you walk past,
they rarely look up
not even to ask for change.
Mist blows in the air
Wetting the streets and
the skin
On television, California is warmer than this
We walk past a dead sea lion
washed up on the beach
Sand is in its open,
Lifeless eyes.
No wounds,
looks fat and healthy.
Probably a parasite.
The same parasite that sucks the color
from all of San Francisco.

"God Framed a Holocaust"

It’s a long and
Arduous Journey into the
Heart of this gorge
It winds through
The pages of a fantasy novel
The soft
Buttermilk stream wearing
The rock down
Like a persistent army
I stop here and there
As I descend
To watch fish chasing bugs
In the evening cool
It will be night soon
And the footing will become treacherous
There is a happy,
Pensive couple sitting
By a pool
They hardly notice me
As I pass

As I get deeper and deeper in
I can see a huge, flattened plane
Across the valley
There is nothing there but dirt
And a couple trailers
It was supposed to be a department store
The most sick and obscene of varieties
But it sits dormant now
Waiting for the next debacle
And I push on
Just so I don’t have to see it
The water is slicing down through the rock harder now
Seeking the bottom of the valley
I’m moving faster too
Excited to see the end of this trail
But I stop short when I get there

The first thing I see is a great amphitheater
With a pool at the bottom
For gladiatorial swimming
The grass around it doesn’t grow free
It’s trimmed and mowed in
Antiseptic beauty
A backhoe sits in the river bed
Digging out a bigger swimming hole
There are people down there
Cooking and playing frisbee
There is a road beyond and cars
Are passing the houses on the other side of it
I don’t want to be a part of it
So I sit at the top of the falls and write
The water down there is opaque
Up here it is clean
And sings to me as it goes over the rocks
Not like the shouting trolls
Who hurry to the park below
How can they be so crass?
How can they not be in awe?
It’s a different world down there
One I don’t understand
Picnic tables and parking lots
Nature as seen on TV
There is mud and algae up here
And everyone knows there’s no beauty in that
So they have to pave it over
Make it safe for human consumption
These rocks could tell a million stories from a million years
But the real entertainment is down there in the volleyball pit.

“Bourbon Street Hustle”

“Desire” screams the flashing
Yellow sign on the topless bar
Across the street from our fancy restaurant
People from every walk of life
Millionaires to paupers
Pushing and shoving
From bar to gaudy bar
The rich notes of live jazz
Float onto the wet pavement
Where flocks of people walk with drink in hand
The smell of cigar smoke mixes with marijuana
Burning with observant police only a few feet away
In balconies above, drunk girls
Flash their goods for strings of flashy pearls
Over the din of happy people,
Talking, yelling, living
There is the steady thump,
Of a boy playing buckets
“Meet my manager!” he says in a song break
“His name is Phil,”
“Phil the bucket”
People applaud and drop dollars
Later,
On the trolley
There is a girl swaying back and forth
Her neck is covered
With metallic green beads
“You showed your boobs to a LOT of people,”
Chide her friends
“I don’t show my tits to just anyone,”
She retorts