#francisco
Star. You are like a star in the sky,
I want to look at you, Even from afar,
you are always in sight, I think of you as if it melts.
At school, my eyes always look for you,
When I see you, the joy cannot be described,
When I look at you, I turn pale, My love,
don't smile because I am already falling.
In a chaotic environment, I always see you, Even from afar, I still find you, When we stare at each other, my heart beats faster, my love, My heart doesn't want to give up, It only makes me happy for you.
Feb 20
Feb 20, 2026 at 1:35 AM UTC
we walk beneath the weight of the outside
birds sing in tune with the collective
& trees reveal their 50-year-old whispers
homes along the way glide above the sunshade
in-between blanketed shadows and sidewalks covered in gum
neighbors swim in the darkness behind blackout curtains
their beds balance on cups of bedside water
& a yellow candle glows above the city
Mar 31, 2021
Mar 31, 2021 at 1:55 AM UTC
Lying poets, they take their words to street
And sweep their hidden eyes to the pissant stone of curb
And drink in the sound of vehicle
Dreaming to be heard as loudly
But soft
And dreary
As the cloud
that casts its watchful shadow
Over the golden hills at the edge of space
And perpetually disposed themselves
Of any real fluidity
The sun pecks at the skin of the earth, as the waves of heat dance for her
And I become lost in the very essential part of it
That runs across the blades of grass in a quiet park
Where children scream gleefully and rub up against the chain-link
And the dogs empty themselves in feeling
The church bells, a trolleycar, the hobo collecting cans from an oasis of free trash bins
I drink the taste of **** and flower fields in the sweet summer sun
I could not believe what I had begun
The dream of Milton, my friend Kerouac, the Republic
The marble columns on Sansome
They are a treat to my ever-aging eyes
Seeking something in the dirtied troughs of heat
In the summer sun
But when will I be done?
Jun 21, 2019
Jun 21, 2019 at 2:02 PM UTC
where ancillary
with Sara
on hill
made wheels
spin the
tires and
burn their
tracks when
demons are
dire spirits
that lift
their hanse
in Bay
Area mother's
musical chairs
and children
wrest souls
May 11, 2018
May 11, 2018 at 6:58 AM UTC
Let's talk about this jazz club
that lives in my cellphone
in 1950 something with Chet Baker
back from the dead.
Let's toast to random notes taking flight
into the city in the middle of nothing nights we've known or been familiar with.
Let's shake hands cordially with the unfamiliar as in "deal", or "peace be with you" as if in church, tipping hats at that stranger passing by at the crosswalk some late evening in spring alongside dandelions sprouting forth from the pavement. Let's read between breaks of beats Kerouac must have hit in 1950 something San Francisco in yelps into the moonlit stages of the balcony of his boxcar boxcar boxcar gone by in a mad blur with whatever graffiti'd message of hope it bore on its sides. Let's hitch into the unknowingly infinite by way of the pen's mighty point. Let's unlearn the way syllable by syllable and demolish languaged signs like hurricane force candor blowing down fact-ory made terms and political decorum as smoke from the pages of their corporate handbook joins the Chet Baker solo note pilgrmage into the holy skyline. Let's move side by side unspoken as those jazz notes he forgot to play. Let's fill in those blanks with uninformed confidence beyond our abilities and grasp the unsayable names of our dreams remmebered. Let's see in seconds passing like bums inebriated with the holy moments gone too soon. Let's talk about nothing but this sacred second at hand on this clock unseen pointing overhead to the face of the moon gone full and hungry for attention. Let this happen only now. Only then will we talk about where it's going.
Apr 14, 2018
Apr 14, 2018 at 12:44 AM UTC
Altamont was
her ravine
but her
rock leave
rift if
timber drove
her away
but stove
verse finally
where she's
mine but
her arm
wore circ
when carpool
get through
this frothy
hollow again
Mar 9, 2018
Mar 9, 2018 at 10:39 AM UTC
I catch myself daydreaming,
about myself but living
In another world
or an alternative universe
I think of all the possibilities
That you and me could be
Of all the scenarios
Where our paths would come close
I think of what if I was a San Francisco native?
Or what if I had build my life in Paris?
When would we meet?
When would you fit?
Because if I'm resurrected
If I come back from the dead
I would want you, guaranteed
Ain't that some greed?
Jan 16, 2018
Jan 16, 2018 at 1:29 AM UTC
Come enter the darkness
Come witness a monster, a man
Of features of a rare creature
With a clear path for a seeker
With a life of a greeter. Stay warm in this cold world with heater
Away from the gangsters and strippers.
Join the growers and hipsters.
Free like in the Castro and Mission.
Always in the corner, being a loner, getting high like a stoner,
being awake unlike an employee and being free.
Don't you see the system of delusion where they draw the conclusion but it's time take back the power and find a resolution
And lead to a revolution
Dec 4, 2017
Dec 4, 2017 at 1:35 PM UTC
* * *
Absorbing dust and Golden heat,
living more openly than I do,
he shimmies to Billie Holiday
The year is not 1957, though
he lives in a San Francisco fog
longing to play the piano
The time in not 11:57pm, though
he orders a ***** martini & swims
in the fishbowl bay
Escaping to Telegraph Hill
to drink moonlight jazz & vermouth
he pretends to live
Way back when
* * *
Nov 11, 2017
Nov 11, 2017 at 4:29 PM UTC
I’m going to be honest,
I’m not a love poet
But if I was to wake up tomorrow morning
And decide that I really wanted to write about love
I swear that my first poem…
It would be about you
About how I loved you the same way
That I learned to ride a bike:
Scared
But reckless
With no training wheels or elbow pads
So my scars can tell you the story of how I fell for you
~Rudy Francisco
I’m not Rudy Francisco
But every man has his own words
So if I was a love poet
God knows I would still write about you
But I would write about how
That smile of yours might only last a moment
But I'll do everything I can to make it last a lifetime
And then... I will make sure it lasts an eternity
If I was a love poet
I would tell you how
You make all of my days
So I'll make it my duty to make all your tomorrows
I would tell you
That the sun rises each and every morning
Because it wants to see you
Because as bright as the sun is
It is blinded by your light
And you make me want to see
What blindness is really like
So I can look at you for the
Short moment before I lose my sight
Because then
Your image will always be with me
However, If I really cared
I would tell you
You’re better off alone
Than with me
Because I know
I know I’ll hurt you
And I can’t bare the thought of that
I would tell you
I’m not enough
And I never will be
Because enough isn’t in me
If I really cared
I would tell you
Nothing
Because I don’t deserve the chance to speak to you
However to tell you any of this
You would have to be real
Nov 2, 2017
Nov 2, 2017 at 7:25 PM UTC
Someone said that having secrets was like holding an invisible box close to your chest. Nobody can get close and they can't see why.
It's in the ******* way.
I overturned my box, papers all tumbling out--you could've picked up any one and asked a question.
You said nothing, upturning like a fish. Belly-up boy.
I picked softly at your lip, finding a tattoo on the inside of your lip.
It says ***** but it might as well have said "YOU'RE STUPID" to me.
I tried to pull any information I could about it out of you.
I got nothing, like *** from a stone.
Sep 26, 2017
Sep 26, 2017 at 12:35 AM UTC
*“Is this what you do?”
Sitting on a dock in Sausalito looking out over
One of the grandest scenes that I had ever seen, I replied,
“What do you mean?”
Moving her feet further away from mine she replied,
“Travel around the country to see women that you barely know?”
Leaning back I answer her half laughing,
“Nope, haven’t had a date in twenty five years.”
“Is that how long you were married?”
“Twenty- three,” I answered changing the subject I continued,
“Sorry, but this view, it is beautiful, it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen.”
Ignoring my intended change she says,
“Well, I hope you know that just
Because you flew from Atlanta to San Francisco - that doesn’t
Mean that you are getting lucky tonight.”
Turning toward her, I responded, “Come on, just relax, can’t we
Just try and enjoy the evening?”
It was about an hour after sunset when we decided to walk back
Up the street to a two story restaurant to get something to eat.
We stopped at the door to look at the menu,
I could hear music from inside and that’s when I noticed the sign
That read:
“Open Mic Competition Tonight – $10 to Enter, $250 & CD to the Winner.”
We went in and were seated and soon we ordered our meals.
The ice was so chokingly thick between us that I was
Beginning to wonder why it was that I had come so far.
We talked little during the meal, mostly about her work and
About my son, who was ten and the fact that I had custody.
“I figure it’s hard for a man in Georgia to get custody of children?”
She said, clearly making a question within a statement.
“Oh, I suppose we are not as backward in the South as we are made out to be,”
I answered her listening to the entertainment coming from the upstairs bar.
I was watching through the windows of the restaurant as a
Huge barge moved across the glittering waters of San Francisco bay.
Off to one side I could make out the lights of the Golden Gate Bridge.
Amazingly beautiful.
“It must be nice to be able to have views like this everyday,” I commented.
She hardly noticed that I’d said anything.
When we had finished eating, I paid and we got up to leave.
As we passed by the stairway leading up to the bar I said,
“Let’s go listen to some of the local talent.”
She nodded her approval and said that she needed to go to the ladies room.
With her gone I gave the man behind the booth $10 and filled out the papers.
When she returned we climbed the stairs and were seated
At a table just in front of the stage.
A woman was singing her rendition of
“The Tambourine Man.”
It was truly an eclectic crowd that somehow was still enthralled in the
Middle to late 1960’s, you know the type.
The Haight Ashbury district was sure alive and well here in Sausalito.
I watched my date, she wasn’t impressed, not in the least.
The bar had a house band that would play whatever music the
New entertainer wanted to be played.
We listened to several other hopeful stars.
Then they called my name.
I looked to my date and saw the surprise in her eyes as I said,
“Would you excuse me for a minute?”
I took to the stage asking the keyboard player to move over.
I turned around and winked at my date.
And then I began to sing and play…
'Sittin on the Dock of The Bay.'
Having sung my song, I returned to our table.
Did I break the ice?
The $250 prize was a nice little footnote,
As was the rest of the evening.
No more wasted time………*
(Click or cut and paste the link below to hear me on the CD)
Jun 6, 2017
Jun 6, 2017 at 11:43 PM UTC
Can a pretty girl
in a short red dress
take away
this emptiness?
Hold me close
squeeze me tight
fill my soul
with rays of light?
Used to be that
the prettiest girls
were actually boys
but no more,
for nowadays
there's a whole mess
of the most gorgeous women
in heels & short tight dresses,
standing on the corners
as offerings to the ways
of men,
some so youthful
that their long sweet legs
totter & tremble
in their fancy shoes
as do the steps
of a new-born
upon the vast
plains of Africa,
& strutting jazzily
their tender flesh
to catch an eye
& then lean
in provocative geometry
into car windows
to state terms
& size customers,
with small handbags
squeezed tight
to their sides,
as they gather in groups
emanating an ****** power
seemingly enhanced
by numbers,
& yet to stroll by
& listen in
reveals nothing more
than simple gossip
& observation,
for after all these
are only working girls
not goddesses at
their ease.
Mar 27, 2017
Mar 27, 2017 at 10:24 AM UTC
I hear screaming below me
Somewhere down in the streets of the forgotten
The echoes sound like marbles in a tin can
Held up to my ear
I can’t sleep, shadows look like humans
And I lean hungrily against my cold wall
Looking for a trace
Feeling for a face,
While the screaming ripples through skyscrapers and clean glass windows of office buildings
I almost wait for the sirens that cut the fog of the city in two
Like a machete to my pillowy body
And I feel to blame
I am warm and alone and insane
I fear I’ll never leave this room
I fear I’ll memorize the city’s hum
Jun 23, 2016
Jun 23, 2016 at 9:34 PM UTC
The city is nothing like my town
The hole of the population
Walks with only themselves
Sometimes they have shoulder bags
Olive scarves
Boat shoes
Sometimes they are running
There are many people
And not one will look at you
Feb 17, 2016
Feb 17, 2016 at 11:41 PM UTC
I was heartbroken in San Francisco
But it wasn’t San Francisco’s fault
I had been abandoned
And I don’t think I’m being dramatic when I say,
left for dead
Isn’t that how you always feel?
When someone you love abandons you?
Like they wouldn’t care if you died
It’s not their business to care anymore
That’s the beauty in leaving
And the travesty
So I walked up the winding hills
And I took in the beautiful Bay Area
And I stared out at Alcatraz
And I walked along the Golden Gate Bridge
And when I asked my best friend,
How many people do you think have jumped off this bridge?
She said, let’s go home
We took a ferry to Sausalito one day
Where it was just as beautiful
We ordered tacos and margaritas
I couldn’t eat the tacos
I couldn’t eat anything
I was on the heartbreak diet
I tried to mask it,
Lord knows I failed
But I tried
I went to every gay bar I could find
I covered my face in makeup trying to mask the misery
I blasted the happiest song I could think of,
Which was Love Shack, by the B52s
I met a preschool teacher,
She offered me ******* in the bathroom of some bar
I don’t do drugs, but sometimes
You have nothing to lose
When I leave California, I told myself,
I will leave heartbreak behind
I will leave my heart in San Francisco, if you will
But that didn’t work out too well
Because when I got home, it was everywhere
It was in the walls, it was the smell of my own sheets
It was his leftover cigarette butts on my balcony
It was the flannels he bought me
Because I was always shivering at night
And his lighters in my coat pocket
Even the slight slant of my apartment’s floor
That he would always complain about
It wasn’t San Francisco, it was anywhere
Feb 11, 2016
Feb 11, 2016 at 5:02 PM UTC
Part I
the plateau. the truest of them all. coast line. night spells and even controlled by the dream of meeting again. the ribbon of darker than light in your crown. No region overlooked. Third picnic table to the drive at Half Moon Bay, meet me there, decant my speech there. the table by the restroom block. While the tide is in show me your oyster garden, 3:00p.m. at half-light here in the evilest torments that have been shed.---------------door locked. The moors. Cow herds and lymph nodes, rancorous afternoon West light and bending roads, the cliffs, a sister, the need to jump. There is nothing as serious as this. There is nothing nor no one that could ever, or would ever on this side come between. Who needs sleep or jokes or snow or rivers or bombs or to turn or be a rat or a fly or ceiling fan or a gurney or a cadaver or piece of cloth or a bed spread or a couch or a game or the flint of a lighter or the bell of a dress; the bell of your dress, yes, perhaps. Having been crushed like orange cigarette light in a pool of Spanish tongues. I feel the heave, the pull; not a yawn but a wired, thread-like twist about my core. Up around the neck it makes the first cut, through the eyes out and into the nostrils down over the left arm, on the inside of the bicep, contorting my length, feigning sleep, and then cutting over my stomach, around and around multiples of times- pulled at the hips and under the groin, across each leg and in-between each nerve, capillary, artery, hair, dot, dimple, muscle, to the toes and in-between them. Wiry dream-like and nervous nightmarish, hellacious plateaus of leapers. Penguin heads and more penguin heads. Startling torment. The evilest of the vile mind. The dance of despair: if feet contorted and bound could move. The beach off Belmont. The hills and the reasons I stared. Caveat after caveat at the heads of letters, on the heads of crowns, and the wrists, and on the palms. Being pulled and signed, and moved away so greatly and so heavily at once in a moment, that even if it were a year or a set of many months it would always be a moment too taking away to be considered an expanse, and it would be too hellacious to be presumptuous. It could only be a shadow over my right shoulder as I write the letters over and again. One after another. Internally I ask if I would even grant a convo with Keats or Yeats or Plath or Hughes? Does mine come close? Does it matter the bellies reddish and cerise giving of pain? Does it have to have many names?
"This is the only Earth," I would say with the bouquet of lilies spread out on the table. Are lilies only for funerals, I would never make or risk or wish this metaphor, even play it like the drawn out notes of a melody unwritten and un-played: my black box and latched, corner of the room saxophone. Top-floor, end of the hall two-room never-ending story, I'm the left side of the bed Chicago and I see pink walls, bathrooms, the two masonite paintings, the Chanel books, the bookshelves, the white desk, the white dresser, you on the left side of the bed in such sentimental woe, **** carpet and tilted blinds, and still the moors and the whispering in the driver's seat in afternoon pasture. Sunset, sunrise, nighttime and bike room writing in other places, apartments, rooms where I inked out fingertips, blights, and moods; nothing ever being so bleak, so eerily woe-like or stoic. Nothing has ever made me so serious.
Put it on the rib, in a t-shirt. Make it a hand and guide it up a set of two skinny legs under a short-sheeted bed in small room and literary Belmont, address included. Trash cans set out morning and night, deck-readied cigarette smoking. Sliding glass door and kitchen fright. Low-lit living room white couch, kaleidoscope, and zoetrope. Spin me right round baby right round. I am my own revenge of toxic night. Attack the skin, the soul, the eyes, the mind, and the lids. The finger lids and their tips. Rot it out. Blearing wild and deafening blow after blow: left side of the bed the both of us, whilst stirs the intrepid hate and ousts each ******* tongue I can bellow and blow.
Last resort lake note in snow bank and my river speak and forest walk. Wrapped in blocks and boxes, Christmas packaging and giant over-sized red ribbons and bows. Shall I mention the bassinet, the stroller, the yard, several rings of gold and silver, several necklaces of black and thread? I draw dagger from box, jagged ended and paper-wrapped in white and amber: lit in candle light and black room shadow-kept and sleeping partisan unforgettable forever. Do I mention Hawaii, my mother dying, invisible ligatures and the unveiling of the sweat and horror? Villainous and frightening, the breath as a bleat or heart-beat and matchstick stirring slightly every friends' woe and tantrum of their spirit.
Lobster-legged, waiting, sifting through the sea shore at the sea line, the bright tyrannosaurs in mahogany, in maple, and in twine over throw rose meadow over-looks, honey-brimming and warehouse built terrariums in the underbelly of the ravine, twist and turn: road bending, hollowing, in and out and in and out, forever, the everlasting and too fastidious driving towards; and it's but what .2 miles? I sign my name but I'll never get out. I am mocked and musing at tortoise speed. Headless while improvising. Purring at any example of continue or extremity or coolness of mind, meddling, or temptation. I rock, bellowing. Talk, sending shivers up my spine. I'm cramped, and one thousand fore-words and after words that split like a million large chunks of spit, grime, and ***** **** and more **** I might even be standing now. I could be a candle, in England, a kingdom, in Palo Alto, a rook in St. Petersburg. Mottled by giants or sleepless nights, I could be the Eiffel Tower or the Statue of Liberty, a heated marble flower or the figure dying to be carved out. I'm veering off highways, I'm belittling myself: this heathen of the unforgettable, the bog man and bow-tied vagrant of dross falsification and dross despair. I am at the sea shore, tide-righted and tongue-tide, bilingual, and multi-inhibited by sweat, spit, quaffs of sea salt, lake water, and the like. Rotten wergild ridden- stitched of a poor man's ringworm and his tattered top hat and knee-holed trousers. I'm at the sea shore, with the cucumbers dying, the rain coming in sideways, the drifts and the sandbars twisting and turning. I'm at the sea shore with the light house bruise-bending the sweet ships of victory out backwards into the backwaters of a mislead moonlight; guitars playing, beeps disappearing, pianos swept like black coffees on green walled night clubs, arenose and eroding, grainy and distraught, bleeding and well, just bleeding.
I'm at the sea shore, the coastline calling. I've got rocks in my pockets, two fingers and two lines left in the letter. I’m at the sea shore, my mouth is a ghost. I've seen nothing but darkness. I'm at the seashore, second picnic table, bench facing the squat and gobble, the tin roof and riled weir near the roadside. .2 and I'm still here with my bouquet wading and waiting. I'm at the sea shore and there's nobody here. My inches are growing shorter by the second, cold, whet by the sunset, its moon men, their heavy claws and bi-laws overthrowing and throwing me out. The thorns stick. The tyrannosaurs scream. I'm at the sea shore, plateau, left bedside to write three more letters. Sign my name and there's nobody here.
I'm at the sea shore: here are my lips, my palms (both of them facing up), here are my legs (twine and all), my torso, and my head shooting sideways. I'm at the seashore and this is my grave, this is my purposeful calotype, my hide and go seek, my show and tell, my forever. .2 and forever and never ending. I was just one dream away come and keep me. I'm at the sea shore come and see me and seam me. I'm without nothing, the sky has drifted, the sea is leaving, my seat is a matchbox and I'm all wound up. The snow settling, the ice box and its glory taken for granted. I'm at the sea shore and there's nobody here. The room with its white sets of furniture, the lilies, the Chanel, the masonite paintings, the bed, your ribbon of darker on light, the throw rug **** carpet, pink walled sister's room, and the couch at the top of the stairs. I'm at the sea shore, my windows opened wide, my skin thrown with threat, rhinoceri, reddish bruises bent of cerise staled sunsets. I'm at the sea shore and there's nobody here. I'm at the plateau and there isn't a single ship. There are the rocks below and I'm counting. My caveats all implored and my goodbyes written. I'm in my bed and the sleep never set in. I'm name dropping God and there's nobody there. I'm in a chair with my hands on a keyboard, listening to Danish throb-rock, horse-riding into candle light on a wicked wedding of wild words and teary-eyed gazes and gazers. Bent by the rocking and the torment, the wild and the weird, the horror and everything horrifying. There is this shadow looking over my shoulder. I'm all alone but I feel like you're here.
Part II
I wake up in Panama. The axe there. Sleeping on the floors in the guest bedroom, the floor of the garden shed, the choir closet, the rut of dirt at the end of the flower bed; just a towel, grayish-blue, alone, lawnmower at my side, and sky blue setting all around. I was a family man. No I just taste bits of dirt watching a quiet and contrary feeling of cool limestone wrap over and about my arms and my legs. Lungs battered by snapping tongues, and ancient conversations; I think it was the Malaysian Express. Mom quieted. Sister quieted. Father wept. And is still weeping. Never have I heard such horrifying and un-kindly words.-----------------------It's going to take giant steel cavernous explorations of the nose, brain cell after brain cell quartered, giant ******* quaffs of alcohol, harboring false lanterns and even worse chemicals. Inhalations and more inhalations. I'm going to need to leap, flight, drop into bodies of waters from air planes and swallow capsules of psychotropics, sedatives beyond recalcitrance. I'm requiring shock treatments and shock values. Periodic elements and galvanized steel drums. Malevolence and more malevolence. Forest walks, and why am I still in Panama. I don't want to talk, to sleep, to dream, to play stale-mating games of chess, checkers, Monopoly, or anything Risk involving. I can't sleep, eat, treaty or retreat. I'm wickeded by temptations of grandeur and threats of anomaly, widening only in proverb and swept only by opposing endeavors. Horrified, enveloped, pictured and persuaded by the evilest of haunts, spirits, and match head weeping women. I can't even open my mouth without hearing voices anymore. The colors are beginning to be enormous and I still can't swim. I couldn't drown with my ears open if I kept my nose dry and my mouth full of a plane ticket and first class beanstalk to elysian fields. It's pervasive and I'm purveyed. It's unquantifiable. It's the epitomizing and the epitome. I have my epaulets set for turbulent battles though I still can't fend off night. Speak and I might remember. Hear and it's second rite. Sea attacks, oceans roaring, lakes swallowing me whole. Grand bodies of waters and faces and arms appendages, crowns and more crowns and more crowns and more crowns and more crowns and I'm still shaking, and I'm still just a button. And I still can't sleep. And I'm still waiting.
It is night. The moon ripening, peeling back his face. Writhing. Seamed by the beauty of the nocturne, his ways made by sun, sky, and stars. Rolled and rampant. Moved across the plateau of the air, and its even and coolly majestic wanton shades of twilight. It heads off mountains, is swept as the plains of beauty, their faces in wild and feral growths. Bent and bolded, indelible and facing off Roman Empires too gladly well in inked and whet tips of bolder hands to soothe them forth.-----------Here in their grand and grandiose furnaces of the heart, whipped tails and tall fables fettered and tarnished in gold’s and lime. Here with their mothers' doting. Here with their Jimi Hendrix and poor poetry and stand-up downtrodden wergild and retardation. I don't give a **** I could weep for the ***** if they even had hair half as fine as my own. I am real now. Limited by nothing. Served by no worship or warship. My flotilla serves tostadas at full-price. So now we have a game going.----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- My cowlick is not Sinatra's and it certainly doesn't beat women. As a matter of factotum and of writ and bylaw. I'm running down words more quickly than the stanza's of Longfellow. I'm moving subtexts like Eliot. I'm rampant and gaining speed. Methamphetamine and five star meats. Alfalfa and pea tendrils. Loves and the lovers I fall over and apart on. Heroes and my fortune over told and ever telling. Moving in arc light and keeping a warm glow.
the fish line caves. the shimmy and the shake. Bluegrass music and big wafting bell tones. snakes and the river, hands on the heads, through the hair; I look straight at the Pacific. I hate plastic flowers, those inanimate stems and machine-processed flesh tones. Waltzing the state divide. I am hooked on the intrepid doom of startling ego. I let it rake into my spine. It's hooves are heavy and singe and bind like manacles all over me. My first, my last, my favorite lover. I'm stalemating in the bathtub. Harnessing Crystal Lite and making rose gardens out of CD inserts and leaf covers. I'm fascinated by magic and gods. Guns and hunters. Thieving and mold, and laundry, and stereotypes, and great stereos, and boom-boxes, and the hi-fi nightlife of Chicago, roasting on a pith and meaty flame, built like a horror story five feet tall and laced with ruggedness and small needles. My skin is a chromium orchid and the grizzly subtext of a Nick Cave tune. I've allowed myself to be over-amplified, to mistake in falsetto and vice versa. To writhe on the heavy metallic reverberations of an altercated palpitation. The heart is the lonely hunted. First the waterproof matchsticks, then the water, the bowie knife, crass grasses and hard-necked pitch-hitters and phony friends; for doing lunch in the park on a frozen pond, I play like I invented blonde and really none of my **** even smells like gold.--------------------- There are the tales of false worship. I heard a street vendor sell a story about Ovid that was worse than local politics. As far as intermittent and esoteric histories go I'm the king of the present, second stage act in the shadow of the sideshow. Tonight I'm greeting the characters with Vaseline. For their love of music and their love of philosophy. For their twilight choirs and their skinny women who wear black antler masks and PVC and polyurethane body suits standing in inner-city gardens chanting. For their chanting. The pacific. For the fish line caves. For the buzzing and the kazoos. For the alfalfa and the three fathers of blue, red, and yellow. For the state of the nation. But still mostly working for the state of equality, more than a room for one’s own.-------------------------------------------------------------------"Rice milk for all of you." " Kensington and whittled spirits."
(Doppelganger enters stage left)MAN: Prism state, flash of the golden arc. Beastly flowers and teeming woodlands. Heir to the throes and heir to the throng.------------------------------------------------------------------------- The sheep meadow press in the house of affection. The terns on my hem or the hide in my beak; all across the steel girder and whipping hard on the windows facing out. The mystery gaze that seers the diplopic eye. Still its opening shunned. I put a cage over it and carry it like a child through Haight-Ashbury. At times I hint that I'm bored, but there is no letting of blood or rattle of hope. When you live with a risk you begin at times to identify with the routes. Above the regional converse, the two on two or the two on four. At times for reasons of sadness but usually its just exhaustion. At times before the come and go gets to you, but usually that is wrong and they get to you first. Lathering up in a small cerulean piece of sky at the end turnabout of a dirt road
Feb 24, 2015
Feb 24, 2015 at 4:07 AM UTC
every morning i imagine waking up someplace different-
to be surrounded by the clatter of early morning traffic and blatant conversations,
and to sip coffee from my favorite mug while sitting on a kitchen counter contently breathing in adulterated air
and simply existing
i am in so much pain.
t.b.
Dec 19, 2014
Dec 19, 2014 at 1:20 AM UTC
I was born on a Sunday.
My eyes change colors
depending on the weather.
I am 5' 2'' but feel like I am 5' 6".
I don't know how to do Calculus.
I am okay with that.
My first name means "one who listens".
I wish my middle name meant "one who speaks"
because my God, I am a wishing well
and people have the tendency to toss
their secrets into me. And their loss, their pain,
their anger, their sadness, their regret
it fills up a part of me that I thought was infinite.
I am on the constant verge of spilling over and
when I walk I feel like a garbage bag, dragged
against cement, one sidewalk scrape away
from coming undone. I am expected to keep
everyone's mess inside.
My friends tend give me **** for the amount of
time I can spend staring in the mirror.
The secret here isn't that I'm vain,
it's that approaching my reflection is like
ripping off a band-aid because looking
myself in the eye still makes my stomach flip.
60 pounds of weight lost does not
silence the echoes of words that
convinced me that life as a size zero
was the only life worth living and
I had been alive nine sizes too long.
I can't always remember that I am beautiful.
And I have this collection
of words that I should
have said. When I am alone,
I bring them out from
my closet and introduce
them to the ghosts of
people I have lost,
of the people I could not fix,
of the people I should forget
but can't forget because I
don't want to forget because
there's something about keeping
wounds open that feels better
than letting them heal—
I have always been one to pick at scabs.
This is my declaration of honesty—
My name is Sam.
I can't ride a bike
but I can write you a poem.
I am afraid of perpetually falling
in love with people who won't love me back.
There is a man in a cell I live to forget.
I am convinced Heaven looks like Ireland
and that soul mates come in multiples.
My voice shakes when I say what I think.
and for once,
this poem isn't for you.
This is a poem for me.
Dec 1, 2014
Dec 1, 2014 at 9:17 AM UTC
I remember looking across the Golden Gate Bridge thinking... This was it! We could never be who we used to be.
Wind in our hair as we drove fast on the interstate... Just you laughing at me and me smiling at you.
What joy to be young and dumb and in love with each other and life.
It was a cool California night, we drank wine under the moonlight and roamed the city with brown paper bags in our hands.
You arms around my shoulders your lips against my cheek... I couldn't help but think this was it! We could never be who we used to be.
There's something about the city at night with its lights and the thought that danger could be around any corner.
But this was exactly where we ought to be... Just you laughing at me and me smiling at you.
Nov 10, 2014
Nov 10, 2014 at 7:54 AM UTC
What is beautiful in San Francisco?
Nothing.
In this city we are all ***** sinners looking for a sweet distraction of purpose.
What is beautiful about San Francisco?
Everything.
In a place where desperation meets innovation, we give birth to skyscrapers, art, music, joy, hate, *** love, and positively shining ideas. However essential to our existence and our sanity, these things are ugly because they stem from us and are therefore destined to warped, mangled, stretched, killed, and forgotten. But San Francisco tries on, steady as her bridge, to bring people to the enlightened kingdom. But we dark inhabitants are fated to lose the battle; for she cannot help us rise above the pull of the flaws of man.
This is the story of me.
And of Him.
And of San Francisco.
The story of opportunity for a new life, and an unavoidable failure.
Oct 27, 2014
Oct 27, 2014 at 7:35 PM UTC
Encased in metal, their bodies careened towards the city. The grinding, the metal on metal screeching, quieted their thoughts.
Head against glass, crowded and foggy, the mother in grey plots her scheme to the nearest bottle of liquor. The man with guilt in his eyes, clutches her hand and wonders when he can get away.
They coast past creeks of muck and cigarette butts. Two bodies on their way to the next hour.
The small girl sleeps on her mothers chest breathing foul ash from the air. Her father smokes with his hand behind a book and exhales sour remorse from his worn lungs.
The mother with heavy eyes, avoids wishful thinking. She has never relied
on luck, so she sits, encased in metal ignoring faces and avoiding eyes.
Aug 12, 2014
Aug 12, 2014 at 7:15 PM UTC
In every one-word world, exotic spaces' gradual state of life proclaimed as a melon . As the urges to divide the pleasures of the infernal forth from the happiness which has closed in to the square-shaped restless less rolling boxes. And what the treat is if all of the souls from the cypress take the higher breaths of the shrew and belabor them unto the points of humanity, uncivilized humanity that is quite bountifully.
During this autumnal abscission where the alizarin and pallid arms and edges, crooked and afraid, steep in the sullied tatterdemalion and the mysophilia that emimart
Apr 26, 2014
Apr 26, 2014 at 5:13 AM UTC