Yesterday's June

Evening with its long shadows

The Flaneur stretches his legs and proverbial mind

a man of the future world with his head in the big now

 Another quietly thrilling 

after supper walk 

to the Port of O

Boat traffic

of the utilitarian variety

prevailed in the evening light

 Here cometh yet another

 behemoth container ship,

desirable goods from overseas

Meanwhile 

back in the representational

 A pop jazz sushi night-club

Japanese restaurant,

train tracks, lonesome echoes

Tracks going West

buoyant manhole covers,

another book of hours folds

 My shade reaches its zenith

 Some day and it wouldn't be long

The Seas once here will return again

 Mean while we'll double-down

on "our children's Future"

 And raise you 

plutocratic 

capitalist end-game

Checkmate

 Superstition and nameless dread

  Terrorism was originally defined

as a means of state control

Skull images, 

not an urban minute without one

 Hee-haw

The Fat Lady

Offensive perhaps,

you couldn't tell by the clientele

57% of African-American women

are obese, I just read

 Motorpsycho Nightmare

Police parking only

 Last light on the haunted hotel

Mexicali Rose

 2.

A passing salute,
Cool and coastal today

sun comes later

 One tries to stay cheerful,

veering from mindless postivism

 To the most dreadful negativity

 Who you gonna call?

Nobody can hear you 

when you scream

 Back to our own stonehenge

 3.

 Back at the bus shelter

basic primitive cortex appeal

of baby mammal face,

I stood waiting,

a guy was drinking beer inside

 Goslings on Lake Merrit

a peaceful respite

over-population follows

 Three bulbous police cars with dogs

lorded menacingly over the park

Were they looking for a fugitive

The "lake" has no scarcity

of miscreants despite its charm,

Two Chicano kids were down at the cove

where geese and gulls congregate

they induced the geese to follow them en masse

as the little boy dropped cookie crumbs

The older boy made a clever video of the mob,

Teasing but not overly mean,

Later though they found a mini-soccer ball

and whipped it hard at gulls

they had chased onto a little pier,

Those birds have a right to be here, you know,

I shouted, Unmolested!

When the gulls flew back I saw one struggling

Flopping down, its leg apparently broken

We forgive children

I tried to remind myself

 The spiky cactus

bears flowers and fruit

 Hee haw, y'all,

here's to an unruly July

4.

Recently arrived in 1979 

I went twice to the SF Zoo

I sometimes visit the perimeter and look in

far at the end of the street car line,

Yet if I were to really go and observe

the animals I would leave in depression

the inescapable sadness of seeing

wild beasts in prison,

On the first visit with my brother's "square" family

I slipped away to enjoy medicinal smoke alone

On a path through shrubbery

 a tapir was on a parallel caged pathway

I let him sniff the extinguished "roach"

He was ready to eat it 

but with regret I reneged,

It did have rather a sad face

29-30 June 2016