Day of the Dead on Garfield Square

i was in the Castro District
on a slanted pacific sidewalk
near a collection of hard-edged
locals who traffic in tourist photos,
trying to keep a lid on my disappointment
and a hand on my wallet, which i had relocated
to one front pocket.  i imagined i was attracting the
notice of too many fine young men by striding
through the busy intersections with both hands on my hips;
but the weather was holding, full of sun and windy, so i relaxed.
it really was a gorgeous day and it wasn't like i was
really lost, so i continued to descend on San Francisco
with an appetite directed for Haight-Ashbury, where i expected
to find a smokey politics with no hint of ocean fog.
yet the uphill walking in the afternoon
was more than i expected and very steep;
i eventually began to shudder with hunger and fatigue.
my vision continued to be fine, it was the map i used
which was confusing:  soldiering on through the breeze,
i found my way often enough to eventually arrive at a
crowded block of streets where i saw Jesus.
He was on a scale considerably larger than life-size.
i knew He was Jesus because He carried a sign, so I had a new mentor.
i asked Him for something to eat and received a piece of bread.
within less than a year of apprenticeship, i had my own bakery.
now, living in the Mission, i attend the Day of the Dead and also
pretend i am Jesus, wearing His crucial sign, smiling with my eyes, and
passing out bread to everyone i meet on Garfield Square.

Anne, admit it!

Anne,
admit it!
this still-life
proved a godsend
for anyone moderately
gifted and we've seen a
few works tastefully done
and widely read, so the idea
of magical power to climb and
cling is alive and well in our old age.

i don't think i've ever heard your voice up close
but i feel your energy and have an appetite for it.

The Bowers Writers House

10 people and
the brick wall was cold
and i sat looking at the empty hole
where a fireplace was permanently stuck
no dry wood was burning, no wet wood either
nothing to steal the chill from our tiny room
no heat or close body warmth and
no hot conversation forming
inside the gray heads or the stranger eyes or
on each cautious lip
whispering into view
soft gossip from an old chin or tongue
rolled onto the large rectangular table
where the student chairs sat squarely
with no visible stain to help identify
a momentary fit of passion, which didn't
exist anyhow or anywhere within sight
there was a nearby shadowed sun room leading
to the grassy rear yard which had no running dog
no dog in fact no cat no caged bird singing no bird
no garden and no gardener bending to the
springtime task of preparing soil or
fondling seed bought during a prior fall sale and
now ready for the one great brown dirt fertility act.
a small kitchen where a crystal bowl mostly full
of jellybeans tempted no one or maybe one
was nearby with a bag of local pretzels
salted & dark and open near the potato chips
no dip no margaritas no strawberry smoothies
the student introductions having been made,
class began with a handout and a reading
of the handout and more handouts and more explanations
and the idea of needing some generic
Viagra to get it up popped into my mind,
but i have a new bicycle saddle which should help.
i heard the teacher introduction explaining
this was to be an introductory study of the
Beat Generation and i knew i would be beaten
when the woman near me said she was stiff from
sitting and at the age of 86, she expected it.
her neighbor said she wasn't stiff and she was
91 and i began to feel nicely stiff like a corpse all made up
in my final box as the few remaining family
members turn away toward their cars, fumbling for a
cigarette or remembering a good place to eat nearby,
while discarded flowers are scattered on the cemetery ground.
i heard a distance fire siren and looked at my watch,
as pictures of a newly-born grandson were handed
around the table for our mutual enjoyment and i thought
you can't beat this, Jack!

Tag, you're IT, Kerouac!

"Straight from the mind to the voice,"
said the mad-eyed man with whiskey
on his lips and cigarette smoke blowing
up his loose-fitting pants where the lovely hand
of a lady journalist from Italy was busy
writing about her life on a Buddhist campus
and she asked him in all earnestness sweetly
if IT was because of the war or because of a need
for change or simply because the dragon tattoo
on the early morning side of his second half
kept spitting fire even during the heaviest New York rains,
when everyone else went running under cover?
while at east 9th and 3rd avenue there was a baby boomer carriage
and he rocked that boat like a titanic wave crashing
through the intersection of his sad generation of brown
shoe wearers looking for a pair of uptight white socks and
Slim playing hot on the nearest radio set high in the
rafters of the famous Harmony Bar and Grill, where
the girl with the unbuttoned blouse kept bouncing her brown hair
into his face and it was the largest crowd he had seen on Harlem
streets in over a week of searching, but it was a Friday night
and their music was jumping into and out of cars and fast trucks,
and hipsters on the road were looking for a good time in no time at all,
shooting around to find something that wasn't perfectly boring,
so they finally asked him to be IT.

an open window

looking at the empty hall
on the open window i saw
my face

next to your smile
and for a short while
all was motionless.

there was no sound;
no one else was around
inside the big house,

only old memories
and the gentle tease
of cooking odors from below

where fresh black coffee
and green tea
would wait for us.

the onion and eggs
arms and legs:
we were both stirred.

the sun also lingers

it's not as simple as it first appears
finger-painting smears
across my face
when i stand in the valley
with my new friend Sally
and her frilly lace.
her foot steps etching sand
a drink in each hand
her music flows
we watch the sun roll around
not making a sound
and it knows
touching skin with fingers
as it lingers
all afternoon long
sweeping the floor
and more
with song.
and when it seems
i have nothing but dreams
out my window
i see through the dark
her smile in my park
and a moon glow.

Room 6 of the Hotel Drouot, 06/13/1921

so i punched the dealer in the head &
would have kicked him more than i did
but was abruptly pulled away, 

in a short-lived fit of loyalty,

by his hysterical brother! 

Leonce was shouting and screaming on the floor
when i kicked him some more

directly in the stomach:
he shrieked again, making me proud of my aim.
we were finally separated by Matisse, 

who said
i was right to beat the poor bastard.
and what a pig!

trying to cheapen cubism with an auction
much too painful to watch. 

"Filthy Pole!"
both Rosenbergs are bastards!!
one was ruining the market for cubism,
while brother Paul connived for a return of classicism,
which he knew he could sell for higher prices.

Pascin's Funeral Day: June 7, 1930

at 36 boulevard de Clichy,
the walls of his studio were sticky red
with an explosion of ultimate sadness
when he drew a final kiss for his mistress,
and drew a final breath
for himself.
on the day of his funeral, she dressed in black.
his wife in black.
waiters and bartenders in black.  

saloons in black.
black was the cloud and black was Paris.
those streets, preoccupied with their special mourning,
allowed only the walkers to follow behind his coffin
to a simple grave site.

their shoes were black. 

their grief was black.
but there, the turned Earth was a fertile brown.  

the near grass brilliant green.

the sky a Matisse blue.  

colorful birds sang and flew 

into the air, a sweetly poetic painted still life. 

windows were flung open.
fragrant wine was poured into buckets of remembrance,
where thoughts like flights of gaiety lifted and blew away as tiny bubbles.
later, his family moved his body to Cimetiere de Montparnasse,
where today he still turns inside that hole.

Picasso never wished Braque away

i heard her voice,
but Gertrude wasn't talking to me.
she didn't even know i was in
an adjacent room, waiting by her front door.
she was saying that Picasso never wished
Braque away, but their rivalry was strong,
reeked of adolescence, and to survive
as great artists, they had to be apart.

i left before she was aware of my presence
and met up with my friend Tom, still wearing
his trademark white suit from the night before.

i complimented him on his recent writing.

he agreed with me that he was a special man who
considered his contemporaries to be literary pretenders.
He was completely vain, and i liked him for that honesty.

in his mind, there was never a doubt about his
writing skills, and any negative critic must be consumed
with jealousy or probably was a registered communist.

i felt comfortable on our walk, and listened to
him ramble on about Whitman and other champions of
a bygone era, when suddenly he told me i was the
wrong person for his confidences, mocking me
for my simple bohemian leanings. 

 he knew I worked in a cold flat, but accused me of not having
The Right Stuff, even though i labored as a reporter.

my feelings were hurt as he abruptly left me on the sidewalk
to go looking for America's future,
hoping to arrive there first, he shouted backwards.

i was about to find a cafe for a drink when i saw Pascin
with two young Parisian girls approaching, and he asked me to join
them for a meal, at his expense, before he fell into a depression.

the two women tried to help him up, swearing in adolescent French,
but he must have been at the end of his rope.

he told one,
Hermine, 

to go home and wait for him in bed,
but he never arrived.

i think Tom would have liked him, had they ever met.

Shave & a Haircut, 2 bits

Not being a devout Catholic
or an Irish whiskey bum,
hell, not even a good Brethren conGREGant
in a luke warm puddle of piss
on the heroin-soaked sidewalk near the Village
Vanguard singing jazz with
Sonny Rollins when he had a reed
stuck between his lips making it
hard for him to sing so he played
the saxophone instead,
i stopped
and began to notice the strange faces
of the strange people walking past.
Face adrift in a camel cigarette smoke screen,
i spent 3 weeks sitting near an alley entrance
with dharma bums saying their Hail Marys
Full of Grace between bites of hot franks and cold beans.
and there was a great buzz at our lunch counter when Pearl
dropped an ear ring in a customer's soup bowl
and the customer refused to give it back, figuring it
was his lucky day.
But she wasn't having none of it and plunged a hand
into the red mess, finding the ear ring before her shift ended.
The barber shop was upstairs where a quick cut and a
stab of wax on the few remaining hairs by my forehead cost
a whole fifty cents, 25 more than the movies but enough
to keep the girls convinced I was a neat one.
but i had no romantic visions unless i was drinking,
and then i was a constant, restless action figure,
sympathetic to a point yet mostly interested in myself and
undisturbed by the growing threat of war.
i should have paid it more mind, 'cause sure enough i was
drafted into the US Army and had my ass shipped in a box
to a foreign land where i saw more strange people with
strange faces but couldn't speak their language even though
they knew mine.  7 years i wandered, in and out of uniform
in and out of trouble and i knew i wanted to find & was
looking for a slice of the pie which wasn't store bought.
so i sat in the bakery booth, waiting for my crowd to gather and hoping
the poets brought some new visions, a couple of tasty insights
to explain the whole Truth your Honor and nothing but the Truth,
wanting to hear them read their work with the passion it deserved,
tossing spit balls at each other, drinking wine and popping pills
if need be to get beyond the cute worry about tragic Self.
i never had a problem with loud voices,
as long as they have an owner, just like a dog
uncovering an old bone and proud of it.

Costa Rica: Osa Peninsula

La Sirena to La Leona.
what?  A tough walk.
19 kilometers, possibly
a little more or less.
the BBC is there filming about
remote spots on the planet.
primordial as well as 2nd growth
forests and palm groves along
the incredible beaches,
salty crocs resting without bathing
suits or dark sun glasses; no Calvin
Klein sightings, unsurprisingly.
the Puma is top of the food chain,
stalking at night when black is black.
Cappuccino monkeys, spider monkeys,
and squirrel monkeys,
run up and down tree trunks and branches
like a bunch of monkeys, flipping their
tails, grabbing a bite, holding a baby
or two or more while the tapir looks on
with slow amusement, without a saddle,
unafraid of man, untamed, uncombed.
and coatimundis, toucans, parrots, and scarlet macaws.
huge, brightly-colored butterflies and
meticulous spiders seemingly unaware of the
scalding sun, the persistent mosquitoes,
the hungry ticks, and the lack of flushing
toilets with perfectly sanitary paper within
an easy reach of a sweaty hand.
but then, the early 19th century explorers had no
modern conveniences, either.
a rain moistens everything.  the birds shake.
noise and silence sleeping together like exhausted lovers,
and the jungle sighs.