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
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
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