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