Winter Lights in Golden Gate Park, Part I (A Short Day's Journey into Night)

Tree-Lighting

7 December 2017

The annual event augmented this year

by a fantastic light show

projected from within

the Conservatory of Flowers

And a Winter Carnival midway

through the pitch black

and chilly park

Where Haight Ashbury

meets the Park

Xmas fantasia abound

New Years babies

fill the void

left by the departed

All about the high life

for the affluent

Stanyon Street

and other sorrows

Tour buses still point out

hippie stragglers

The big trees

of Golden Gate Park

a storybook experience

every time

Actually down

with a sharp cold but

I don't want to stay home

and be all hang dog,

Events happen once

I'm headed into the Park,

deep into the trees

The tree-lighting, Santa

and two glamorous Mayors

are planned for this location

the McLaren Lodge

Ride on the Love Train

Here is the great tree

to be illuminated

at nightfall

A little acid flashback

solar light show of my own

A tiny black girl with solo keyboard

had talent and a mature voice

a little Nina Simone but happier

Decal reads:

Make America Love Again

Tired of waiting

during a desultory pre show

with songs and lapses

A fire truck showed up

with lights flashing

and Santa Claus got out

Shadows are falling

and I've been here all day

I was getting too restless

bored by lack of focus

The mayors were clearly

in no hurry to show up

I put on my figurative

figure skates

and did a double-axle

into the glowing carnival

Turn on

 tune out

drop in

to

Winter Lights Part II

(Light Show)

7 December 2017

Twenty-first Century BART

New BART train

admits no passengers

Not even this

21st century Fox

 

The new look

Improved and enlarged

American Flag decals

won't get you into

heaven anymore 

 

A new bonnet on top

like a mushroom cap

 I think she's cool

kind of masculine

but that's probably

 what she's going for

The train gave me a photo-op

without annoying her

Destination LED signs

on every car

Wonder how long they'll last

Between cars

 like Bowie's LP art for

Station to Station

TRAIN WON'T STOP

And there it goes

Damaged already

one can't help but notice

 Bye-bye,

 bye-bye,

 bye-bye

 

She was wearing mirror shoes

a perceptual first for me

She the bomb

The new era

speeds on

"moving forward"

2 December 2017

Third Sunday in Advent

 The Shrine of Saint Francis of Assisi

A worthy rerun from last December

Returning to a holy venue that I first attended in its original role as a parish church. North Beach was a quite different place then in the last years of the nineteen-seventies.
Everything was, of course, very different than today. Local parishioners fall away,

The place was closed by the Diocese for some time. Its steeples cast  a lonely silhouette in the dusk.
Then the relics of St Francis and of St Clare arrived salvifically. The order of St Francis brought the church back as a national shrine with a liturgy and an outstanding music program. A minor miracle.
After a few years of its success, local Italo-American pride kicked in the funds for a precious re-imagining of the small chapel Francis and his followers built so long ago: the Nuova Porziuncola. It is a place for meditation and prayer and, I think perhaps rarely, a Mass.

Masses in the Shrine itself are well-attended and visitors from all over stream though each day.
Regularly scheduled classical and sacred music concerts take place there as well.
It seems visitors are present at the Shrine whenever I'm there; sight-seers respect the prayerful atmosphere and get a spiritual contact high I am certain.

 The approach on bountiful Columbus avenue,

It's a good time to go in and say a prayer.

 1.

Measuring the Nuova Porziuncola

 The entrancing goodness of the entrance,

Dig the window
like a Renaissance Magritte

 The inner porziuncola,

Re-enter the sacred
like a spacecraft air-lock

 

 Kneel and pray in solitude,
Forget about the passing time,
Unburden your circuitry

 Your own true mind may emerge,

A larger self may manifest in you

 The bread of eternity within reach,

A sandwich from Molinari can be good too

 2.

Inside the Shrine

The bells had been rung,

Vibration still quivered in the rafters 

Like winter birds come inside

 

 The boys choir had finished their program,

The buoyancy of it had lifted all vessels,

 A member of the faithful lights a candle

Extends the feeling in her heart,

It illuminates her day after she leaves

 The figures in the manger
await the coming of the Christ child

 Open throughout the day and throughout the year,

All are welcome and all are blessed

 The mystical light of the sun of Solstice,

Reaches through the stained glass,

Onto a mural of the death of Francis

 An old friend of mine, the poet Philip Lamantia had his funeral Mass here,

The tendentious and misleading introduction to his Collected Poems,

Attempts to portray him as a desultory convert who finally said phooey,

It ignored the fact that a funeral Mass with the music of Messiaen

Doesn't just happen for any merely nominal Catholic who passes away,
It is the decedent's last and most profound profession of faith,
After a coke habit and the bug house Philip swore
The Relics and the Franciscan brothers redeemed his soul and his life

Narrow careerists would rob him of his redemption

Once someone has experienced the Sacred Heart
 Through the Blessed Sacrament,

He exists in relationship to it for eternity

22 December 2013