Tuesday, July 24, 2018

The Week of Portents Begins Softly





 
White Peach
 
 
 Blood moon and Mars loom large
Houses of reverse eclipse
with two full moons in the sky
on the Eve of my Leonine
Nativity
 
 
Sea Ray
my nautical soubriquet
had some cannabis chocolate
and is down by the water
Sunday as usual
 
 
70 degrees a cool breeze
and bright hot sun
can't be beat really
 
 
Desultory fair in progress

 
Working that Bach cello
 
 
 
Paddlers tend to go
 far on the current
then have to work hard to return
after they are tired out
 
 

 
Blues Cruise on the Potomac
came in from the Bay
to sail right past my pier
One could hear the quality blues
the whole time

 
It went down the estuary
then turned around

 
And came back
some were waving
drunken sailors by now

 
 Headed back now
into port again as
San Francisco rises
across the peaceful Bay



 
Unusual apparition
en route to the
Jack London Station

 
Tethered and abandoned
waving to passing trains

 
Anchored
by strange blue ballast
 

 
Moving the whole time
an uncanny presense

 
Time is nigh
I must fly, I must fly
 
 
Construction advances
unabated and unrelieved
paint it black, you devils
 

 
The drooping figure
becomes ultra-man
in infra red
 

 
Even the peach
grows in color
intensity
 
 
 
 
Monday evening
 
 
The moon is a doubloon
snow in a spoon
the angry red planet seen
from the angry green
the 3rd eye from the sun
 
 
 



 
Cloud entities assemble
wispy Geiger phantasms

 
A unicorn
with corkscrew horn

 
Symbolist fright wig
memory traces of Redon
 

 
The approach of the blood moon
the world turns incarnadine
 
 

 
Firmament 
 dense with calligraphy
the moving hand writes

Friday, July 20, 2018

Mission Street San Francisco





 
 
Theater of the Absurd
(see below)



Rip Van Winkle effect
Ghost of nearly 40 years flicker like shrapnel
Dissolve in bright sunlit facts on the ground
An extraordinary hour spent on Mission
When I first came here the district
was certainly dilapidated
despite widespread covert gentrification
it functions as a somewhat lower level
 of the general inferno
 
 
 
Still a main thoroughfare
densely populous
ruins and bunkers
thriving shops and diners

 
The great trees of the Mission
will survive us all
 

 
Always busy, always watchful
many street people... some long gone
mission street accommodates
the down and out
 

 
Edible cactus
on order

 
A traditional way of life
to outlast fashion
fresh fruit and pinatas

 
Mariachis
serenade an eatery

 
Forever a very musical
part of town
Instruments for sale or rent
Lot of ukes on offer
 

 
Holy finger food
Mississippi steel body ukulele
Bet it rocks

 
Hollywood bling
as worn by Deano
and James Brown


 
Simple straight forward solutions
to life's many entanglements
 

 
Others prefer a more circuitous route
at the superstition herb store
hexes, love potions, sacred potpourri
 
Phantasmagoria of murals
 
 
Some verging on art

 
Threshold of cartoon world 
ZAP comics
 
 
 
Carlos it's-all-too-much Santana

 
A realm of lurid nightmarish visions
and paroxysmal graffiti

 
Beats me
Someone very beloved
or very feared perhaps
 
Tacqueria mural
La Madre
 
 
Cool young Mission girl
didn't mind me invading
her privacy I guessed
 
 
I  dig all the little shops
as they cavalcade past
on the fly

 
Smoke shops abound
  legal now baby
Mota para trabajo
 


I'm with the fellaheen
love the deep colors
intense floral patterns,
Reminds me of Oaxaca
 
 
 
The fruitarian Summertime
 

I leave the gold metallic insignia
to the young and flamboyant


 A twilight zone with strange talisman
antiquated manikins uncanny effigies

 
If the hat don't fit
you must acquit
Wear and tear
to mustache and sideboards
inevitable

 
Choose your illusion
as the cliché goes
 
 
Thought I saw someone I knew

 
Only a replica
of feminist Rebecca
 
Thrift store with
colorful ethnic clothing

 
Available for cultural appropriation
by fair bonnie hippie college girls
(or boys)

 
This manikin has more presence
than perhaps one ought to have
 

 
Let's not beat around the bush--
Hookers
 

 
I'm on a sub-mission myself
of a strange mean's clothes-shopping
 

 
Legendary men's wear store
seen the ads for decades in the
alternate free weeklies
 
Reputed to have a great selection
of jeans and flannel shirts
Tough outdoor wear
 
 
Wow
Tons of slinky low-rider gear
Mexican rodeo finery, Zoot suits
many zany tableaux,
 
I didn't want to give the wrong impression
but I couldn't help but chuckle
So I forewent a lot of tempting shots
I was flagging a bit by now
and  I wanted see the flannel shirts
 

 
And because their heart
was in the right spot

 
Adios Siegel's
I may return someday,
all depends on the cosmic flux
 
 
This was the most perplexing sight
on my tour
 
The formerly grand
El Capitan theatre
  

 
I functional building
it retains it's marquee
But when I walked past
it was no longer there
 Disorienting murals
covered a void
They gutted the lobby
for a driveway and
 the theatre for a parking lot
 
I felt dizzy and didn't shoot any
close-ups
Didn't fully understand until
I consulted Wikipedia last night
 
 

 
I had entered a
world of symbols
 
 
 
Appliques
a monstrous cell phone
 meaningless semiotics
 

 
Haunted as I am
by the over-hopping
of craft beer
 
 
I bid a fond
yet hasty hasta luego
to  legendary Mission street
 
 
19 July 2018