Strolling Oakland, One April Afternoon

The low-income people of Oakland

Struggle to hold up their burden

And to keep a roof overhead

(note helicopter tail over roof)

Leo cat that he is,

 the Flaneur expects the unlikely every moment of every day

 1.

Fairyland Make-Believe

 Pretend that flowers look like this

 Does make-believe ever begin or end?

 Which ones will you eat?

 Gusts show up on the Lake

Like transient galaxies

Bottle-brush for the rush

 .

I found myself at a dubious location

A tropical village inside the Fairyland,

Where the children prefer

Pop-art representation to actual trees

 Mysterious drive-way

In a land not far from here

They don't want anybody

To pirate a contact high from the kiddies

We can get out this way,

Just say you never saw the sign

Tell the Old Woman who lives in a shoe
Not to get her granny panties in a burl

 2.

Uptown For Real

 There was a peaceful demonstration planned today,

This leads to an erratic frenzy across downtown,

A wayward bus dropped me off on Telegraph

 So I took the walking tour of thriving Uptown,

 Taking journalistic note of the local plants

And  animal life

 Wondering,

Wondering about the Oakland blues

 Printed esoterica and arcane ephemera

Just don't do it for me anymore

O-O-seven
At Ocean eleven
And the rude boys have a wail
Cause them out a jail
Rude boys cannot fail,

 

Reach over in the corner

Hand me down my walking shoes

 You know by that I got them

Mean old Fat Cat blues

 Trip out on kineticism and the amorphous

 Way down Uptown BART alley

 2 

Latham Square Nitty-Gritty

 Poor people were protesting police brutality,

So they throw out the local so-called cops

And the Highway patrol...

 And the helicopters...

And look the Department of Homeland Security,

Federal Anti-terrorism cops,

All to intimidate people into relinquishing their demands

For justice and equality in a democracy

Think I'll head back over

To the sunny side of the street

14 April 2015

Strolling Oakland One Early Evening in April

The Flaneur never knows what he will encounter when he hits the street.

Sun still bright just before six, I set out after dinner but before coffee;

 hurrying to lessen the risk that the drug store will be closed.

A heavily policed road-block occupied Washington street at Eighth. I walked on glancing at them as I waited for the crosswalk signal, with no sense I could learn what was going on. 

Young stone-faced cops with wrap-around shades like me, women officers too, a  general tendency toward somewhat overweight bodies in stretchy dark blue fabric.

There were no demonstrations anywhere in sight,

 and no apparent criminal activity or other disorder.

A show of force intended for whom?

The everyday unexplained.

I forged on toward downtown.

1. 

Outward bound

 Parrot tile, palm mosaic

In the city center warren of shops,

Deserted but for the ubiquitous security guards

 Horus and the somnolent Nubian,

A gargantuan armed security guard

Rousted a young black guy with a bedroll

effortlessly

 Rows of windows with frosted glass 

Have prisms embedded in them,

Gleaming with the late daylight

Night watchman

 2.

Homeward bound

An stately old house still standing,

No one actually lives here

A gated community of ghosts

Future home of non-existence

Last glimmer in the humble glass

12 April 2015

The Orchid Mosaics

Objective chance will provide wonders when one trusts in it.

 The grass-lawn bowling club's courts

  Bowling Club's mosaic

 Wow, where am I?

 The combined aroma of hundreds of orchids,

Toujours d'amore

 Sensuality made flesh

I don't really notice a whole lot of grass-lawn bowling taking place

Exotic green flower petals

I wanted to pollinate each and every blossom

  Good and dutiful pollinator that I be

 I felt like I was addressing 

An eager class of sexy young students

 A flowering gazebo indoors

 An ambiance like an expensive brothel

 Diggity

 Who brought here this bounty of beauty for Spring?

Hats off to the Golden Gate Cymbidium Society

Things were lovely outside the hothouse as well

March 2015