In The Vicinity of 2022 Part One

 

 

 

In The Vicinity of 2022 

Part One

 

 

 

RAY 
habitue of psychedelic sunsets

 

 

Winter Shadows 

 

 

 

 

 The hazy shades give way
to a crisp dry period

what caught my eye on my daily promenades 

Psychogeography of everyday life

the familiar and the mundane

 made strange

 

 

City Hall

Downtown still fossilized in its

defunctitude

 

 

 

 

A plaza of many demos past

less so in recent times

 

 

 

 

 

Patterns of industrial culture

 reflective or opaque 

 

 

 

 

How swiftly the January sun

slips away 

every day

 

 

We are stuck with 

the civilization we built 

 

 

 

Another healing sunset

from my expanded vantage point

 

 

At some point it's not graffiti anymore

you really have to call

it sign-painting

 

 

When too much

is never enough

 

 

 

 Chasing the last rays

of the apparent present

 

 

Reminds me of my old bat belfry

in Massachusetts

(without the outside staircase add-on)

A place only in memory now 

old house demolished for a new one

 

 

 

 Winter thoughts of the next holiday

 

 

The Express finally

refurbished its news-box

The last of the local free weeklies

 

 

 

True it isn't the newspaper of old

Formerly quasi-Left it became a little reactionary

before switching to all BLM all the time 

Now at a flimsy 20 pages it struggles

for equilibrium & survival

 

 

 

 

Yellow cab

battered by gig economics 

 

 

 

Ton of building materials

unloaded on MLK sidewalk

Bold guerilla lodging designs

Interesting to see how long it lasts

 

 

 

 

What's new?

What else is new?

 

 

 

Navel-gazer

 

 

 

Timely Signage

 

 

 

 

Auto Row Showroom

Boarded still

 

 

 

 

This part of town has seen

very costly arson

and riot in recent years

 

 

 

 

Heroic criminal culture

from the White House

to the border wall

 

 

Name a great French poet

Roll over Tom Verlaine 

& Penny Rimbaud

 

 

 

 

As I looked at this a car drove past

with an LED Cannabis sign on the roof

Everybody's getting into the business

Right near Whole Foods

could be a lucrative location 

 

 

 Amid still unoccupied new buildings

under a cotton sky

 

 

 

 

Chinese New Year's Eve

 

 

 What ever happened to
Little Johnny Jewel?

 

 

Scene from a Chinese shopping mall

 

 

I never hear Peking Duck mentioned

as part of a healthy diet 

 

 

 

Children's art renderings

over the Chinese branch

of the Oakland Public Library

 

 

 

 Demonstrates a profound

 love of animals

 

 

 

 

 In a pig's ear

a delicacy savored by the 

omnivorous locals

 

 

 

 

 

January-February 2022