All Souls Stroll on Woolsey

 

Preceded by All Saints Day

Sweet peppers at the Berkeley Farmer's market

All Souls Day took the form of a sunny afternoon in the Elmwood district of Berkeley, my old stomping ground.

 The Flaneur began his leisurely walk in the Rockridge.
Stopping at Cole coffee for a pound of beans
 and a large black coffee at the table outside.

Across the street at the new supermarket mega-complex

the facts were on the ground,
Quel dommage.

 The gift of solitude,

 The massive caffeine influx made me feel like I was on 

An escalator over the hill, I puffed my bird-call sized fatty

and climbed on a rope ladder to the moon,

remembering Jack Bruce so recently departed

I'd seen him with Cream and stood on-stage

at the Newport Jazz festival when he performed

With the Tony Williams Lifetime.

 Roseate trees on Eton

 A notable redwood on Woolsey

A street where I lived for fifteen years

 A proverbial quiet neighborhood at this elevation

Around the corner and onto Claremont avenue,
Batman neon in the reflections of trees

Military vampire 

Outside the febrile comic book shop

A bookstore cat

They sell a sandwich press that toasts

The image of Our Lord onto the bread...

I want one

I love this kind of stuff,

Some folks spend their adult life 

chasing a child's Halloween high,

I know I did

And it's all half-price!

Look they have designer plague rats!

Old STAR market established long before I moved here,

They were recently graffiti-bombed by friends of animals

who remind us that organic meat is still murder

I wanted a Giants yamulke

but they told me that they were all sold out

The Claremont Uplands begin here

Home to prominent bankers and lawyers

and such

I started to feel a little self-conscious

Out of place sort of like a country bumpkin

The Flaneur headed to more familiar environs

a little farther down Woolsey street

The Black Dahlia's daughter

The balance of her remains remain undiscovered 

In a shallow grave not far from this spot

2 November 2014