.
.
1.
.
.
..
8pm, beneath my window,
360 Guerrero St., and then
along 16th St. to Valencia
10 May, 1996
..
"Wake up!" old Corona rushes
down Guerrero yelling:
"Can you stand up to 5 million years?!"
Wake up!
Wake up? I'm the night
combatant in this ongoing
insomniacathon, ch'a on the
streets past midnight
wandering for the
desaparadoes.
They've set Checks Cashed afire,
old Frank Yerby sold on the sidewalk, and
"has a daemon driven ye bitches mad?!"
.
All is well with the Goat Song. Corona
tarts the light. It's still Helots v.
Spartans in the neighborhood and
crepes v. burritos, it is
everyday on 16th St., San Francisco,
California.
.
At the New Dawn Cafe
this "mere succession of strokes,
sightless narration"
is a butch- (vegan bull)
(que?)ery
com (wet tree) bat
is a po-slam. the queer senses
trickled in first at Esta Noche,
first gaylatinodrageverythinghere
La India Bonita, Casanova, and
the thousand million words of
love, lies and deceit at
Abandoned Planet Books. The Woman's
Center mural on 18th and where Emma
Goldman never met her match.
.
On the 22 MUNI line, that runs
from Potrero Hill (where Kerouac
longed over the brakeyard and over
Neal,
to end
up in the Fillmore
-- spent for),
Roberto is just back from the clinic
wearing a smile on his face.
if love is love merely absent --
(and love? -- has all 'been said'")
.
Then Mamere was right to die of a broken heart,
.
and if fog rollsover July like an old skeptic
with cool reversal and naive wit
what was expected and what is to come and
what will suffice and what is good need
not be revamped by the ...small red lamps
that float seaward onward.
.
And if...old Adonis passes you by
in San Francisco
nevermind the busted taillights
in the Avenues or shards of dreams
seen from Twin Peaks
refracted, prismatic,
the risk and flex
of matter - concave
and convex and at a distance
make a prettier vision,
.
.
2.
.
.
..
3am, 16th St.@Valencia, 12 May 1996
..
To get a Johnny Donut
-- you must pass judgment on
Quasimodo,
abandoned in the tearless
night by Mamere and the social workers,
become the guitarist, yourself
and come with flowers to play, coins
to fill an empty chinacup
.
with secondhand songs, your hair,
for fingers that know never
to embrace a final chord
.
Roberto shivers as he walks
in the salt air to the
Mission Hotel
fleabitten room he's had alone,
since '93, over the Sincere Cafe.
Roberto, Quasimodo,
blameless, forgotten -- dance the
open thud of the bringle, untuned
one block to glazed heaven,
.
but life cd. end for the sugar,
or knowledge of this city,
and the resonant brangle.
(In the dark, the donut issue is seen
in a fuller light)
but it's not
Quasi who is feared
or pitied.
.
It is LeRoy,
daemon of defnaught
who tortures old man
Johnny with his boombox
digging for psychotic
change and the mumble, his outpatient ID card,
spent matchbook, and lint spilled
on the counter,
-- three pennies short
of a glaze.
but John Jr. is well...he's got a
fu manchu
stringing down his throat,
and Tommy Wong is
his hairdresser,
Old John
sleeps in the back,
or practices tai chi
dragons in flour circles, and
makes the reprobate glaze
in harsh fluorescence
.
(the donuts issue vision
.
.
3.
.
.
9am, Valencia St., the vicinity
of San Francisco, and Earth, a place,
1 April 1996
.
At the Apollonius Juice Joint
it's a healthy
planet for Ione and Rodia
wheatgrass imitative magic
restores yr. natural natural senses
so press the green to sip sip
you metabolic heart / only physic
you hydrogen oxygen carbon
of a determined ratio
--Rejuvelax, of wheat,
the fermented berry
flavored with
mint and lemon.
.
blech. sip sip. he begins to like it.
.
Not for Harmon the bookseller,
owner of Abandoned Planet two
doors down -- two kitties, Absinthe
and Absentia, marvel
the browsing bohemians.
You'll find the Arena of Masculinity
to unmask the dissociative penis
(Gear up -- old SLUGGER Afterburners on. . .
====)
you'll find also Duncan at _the clavicle_
and the great artery afterburning
Henry Miller, Emma, Buber, and Harold
Norse; all crammed, and well-stocked on
the shelves. And yes you'll note that
good Roberto plays the black Steinway
still upright in the corner. You'll
note as well there
begins a procession of
street hagglers
who even dead remembered copping a dime
who even plying cardboard
cast a shadow (all the way to North Beach
and the dream that brought
forth Quasi)
there begins the entirety of multitudes, masses,
begins B6 and B12, begins chemotherapy, begins Rock
Hudson, AZT, and purity.
.
Begins the road to Tiburon, to Napa, to Mendocino
" ..and sea claws gathering."
.
..at Coit Tower they built it..
for her love of firemen,
Lily left $125k (1929 dollars)
WPA murals depicted California life
full-breasted women and manly
surveyors -- and in the library
scene robust, sacred, guarded.
the _buttocks_ to die for.
.
.
--in a fuller light) it is both
an abandoned planet, and planet health.
donuts and tamals, crepes and burritos
vision (I aint bein sivilized.
I been there.) and particle.
-- impairment and delight.
who disappears? who gathers what?
.
.
4.
.
.
7pm, Cafe Macondo, 16th St.,
San Francisco, 11 May 1996
.
.
Simon Bolivar, Malcolm X,
John Coltrane, and
the committee of dissent
fine tune consciousness
on a wing understand me.
They forge base metal / supra physic /
they love Aleister Crowley, Garcia Marquez
and swarm over vintage clothes,
(hand me downs) (at Brian's store)
fluidity matched by the deeppower,
deep to the channel, they speak of
Berkeley in the 60s, and Eldridge Cleaver
before he came back to rot.
They tune to Radio X with J. and they
ARE IN
of and
search
and for
the perfect falafel.
THAT
won't find a symmetry.
.
"knees were holy to Greeks"
reports Professor
.
and Rhoda at Planet Health recommends
rejuvelax for the sacred and the berry.
.
In the back at Mission Grounds,
sensibility wove from the corn tamal
--carrot juice a statement
and the ch'a, double latte
with Duncan and Kimberley,
who walks past Casanova
that was . Alchemy, was. Then, was
now, was fun, was in the sidewalk,
and the concrete of its making,
now the hands that scribbled
"Bird Lives!" on the wet slab
wreak a
poor science aye, but still a
better psychology.
.
.
ick. sip sip. he begins to crave it.
.
.
rejuvelax is the distillation.
.
Who disappears Roberto?
No small task to ask you. and what
of red lamps/and Adonis that
.
and who...
float seaward onward. It is not yr planet
alone you must carry.
What I thought could be left out?
Upward, sonnets, rave on.
.
Yr ignorance of..my ignorance of..
(gold) his ignorance of words
we had stolen from better people.
The sun will rise again,
and it is very late for aspirations.
.
The Greeks swore by their knees
thought with their hearts and lungs
..and now the sediment of these
lives is off yr/his shoulders.
Not the dissociative penis or
the arena of masculinity now
(get the Western Socialist thing)
but the sleeping fountains, crystaljet.
Even on an abandoned planet, the.
.
and so..What do you want of me?
Robert(o)?
I have workouts with this netlog
#channel clockwork is inscrutable,
And the log of all logs isrolling, in
myheart tosay just to you
say among many things that I remember
you and still await you.
A new and vibrant journal
with Adonae, and shielding
dawn still has her tiny footsteps...
.
that
.
it is not too late for these aspirations
download me whole, strategies, disavowals
& of these lesser needs and holyholy
.
holy knees, this is what you always
.
wanted.
.
.
5.
.
..
Dawn on 16th St@Albion,
San Francisco, 8 April 1996
..
.
Roberto carries his blanket
into Katz's Bagels
the sweat now dried from
the surprising spring heat.
mistaken for the return of cold sweats
"Not again! I was supposed to die in 93."
he tells me, ghost of a lover
who died and is still in his smile.
.
.
The pink sun lights the graffiti, be still.
.
Abandoned couch with no cushions
props the bones of yet another straggler
encompassed in the slamsleep
of alcoholic blackout.
.
.
Pigeons eat their morning seed
outside Dr. Bombay's bar. And the
way is my way is home is enough will
suffice, rejuvelax, Rhoda, absinthe.
.
Yes, it is peaceful and the newcomer Yuri looks on,
cream cheese bagel and tomato slice, and the style
of Moscow still in his clothes and the way he wears
them, rather the way they hang on Roberto too. And
fear of AIDS on his lips. I tell
.
Roberto:
The heat of a Kentucky summer long ago,
and children who dragged mattresses before an
only fan guarded by my brother Tim. Who watched
.
over me when Mother was sick, who took me to Frisch's
Big Boy for a cherry cola and brought me bubblegum 45s
from Vine Records. And Tim, who did not condescend an
eight-year-old who wanted "Poems, Prayers, & Promises,"
by John Denver, cause he heard it and cried when Bill
left for Vietnam, a place Mountbatten had probably
never been to or where was it? Sivilized? And Tim,
.
who dared me jump to his arms in the Fountain Ferry
swimming pool and who caught me and who did not fail
me and who taught me to swim.
.
The pink sun lights the townhouses of San Francisco
a finer shade of red.
.
(Breaststroke).
.
.
11 May 1996
James A. Gardner
[end {for Roberto}]
.
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