I lost myself once upon a time
in a place that was only whispered to me in dreams.
Where the fog is thick and threads through the seams
of street lights and street cars with *** fights and brillo bars.
I tell you I lost myself on the tongue of insanity
who swallowed my soul to feed its humanity.
I lost myself
in a city that found me;
San Francisco, 2013
Let me extend two points like two bridges
that begin in separate places but lead to the same thing.
I’m talking the people in both hands with countless art in between.
The people, the people, the people.
What can’t be said about the near million faces
sleeping on warm pillows or cold stones,
wearing top hats or traffic cones
because not every night are people thriving.
But they’re still surviving, getting busy living or getting busy dying.
In their eyes are stories being told
once you wipe those windows into their souls, deep.
You see it all,
Just like every star in the fall when the sun goes to sleep.
I gave a homeless man a dollar who gave it to another homeless man who then gave it back to me
Like we were passing a love note that said, “You need this more than me.”
So which of us was the one without the home?
Home I soon found in the art of every step taken,
one foot in front of the next.
I can’t walk through that city discounting the side effects.
I was drunk,
but not from bottles or cans
I was drunk from the hands
that told tales with graffiti art to camera pans.
and countless other melodies
massaging bricks into the landmarks that spanned.
Culture sprinkling up and down the hills and between the cracks
Painting colors in the sky as the rainbows stacked,
Finding pots of gold by merely lifting my eye lids back.
There is so much to say about this city in the bay,
that is held in place by the people of race
and the vessels of art that encompass in its space
like stories and attitude,
survival and gratitude,
muse and expression
in delight or depression.
I tell you I lost myself in that city.
But I know now that being lost is sometimes the only way to be truly found.