A San Francisco Mythology
O bottle!
Plastic bottle
o bottle
plastic whisky bottle
we’re in Fresno
pay attention
we’re in Fresno
a burnt shrub stands in a parking lot
like the skeleton of some primeval bird
in Orange County
I used to know someone fair, bottle
(she had orange ribbons in her hair)
Los Angeles
a journey to the end of the night
Celine’s bright midnight
Barstow, the edge of
the desert
the drugs have begun
to
(take hold). . .
San Fran
cisco
blues
one
two
(a one two)
three. . .
Wandering
in San Francisco
following the light
along the buildings
of North Beach
City Lights
Kerouac alley
old ancient sad-eyed-wise-eyed sages of the promenade
with faces like brown paper bags
bhikkus and bodhisattvas of ancient San Fran
eyes of woeful bone
“prowling in the wilderness to hear the voice crying
in the wilderness, to find the ecstasy of the stars, to find
the dark mysterious secret of the origin of faceless wonderless
crapulous civilization. . .”
Kerouac with a bottle of whisky
weeping to the Void in the gardens of Paradise
old Ferlinghetti Rexroth and Ginsberg
kneeling and drinking, reading and reeling
soft night
(bright midnight)
strung out, best minds of their—
meanwhile Burroughs
searching, ever vigilant
the slums of Mexicali Mexico and Tangiers
for the next fix
& hopping a plane to the
warm soft malleable underbelly
of San Fran. . .
Westward was the time
that came naturally
to Steinbeck and Ford and Dos Passos. . .
And the hills stretch on
a landscape of the body
butts breasts and thighs
gold and glistening
contours of wheat,
trees billowing
planted in pools of shadow,
and the days run away like wild horses
over the hills,
and the sky
blue as
in (Van Gogh’s) Arles. . .
Sitting at a table outside a cafe
in North Beach near City Lights
Kerouac Alley Rexroth street
smoking a cigarette and drinking
a Bloody Mary. It is cool here
in the summer and the seaside breeze
blows diligent and it is
difficult to smoke cigarettes,
they go out, just like that,
or they burn
like
Thomas Wolfe and Saroyan and
William Blake and Whitman
even Henry Miller once burned
in the air
thoughts
garlands
and flowers. . .
“Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in an hour.”
O bottle
plastic bottle
green bottle
in the depths
blue depths
green depths
subterranean depths
of the Greyhound toilet. . .
O bottle
remnant of some poor writer
long gone
(but not forgotten). . .
Bottle,
you and me,
pal,
you and me. . .
“The west is the best.
Get here. . .
we’ll do the rest.”
This is the impression
lost
out the window.
Hills stretch on and on and on
diminshing
the steep incline
of the sky.
And:
“I’ve grown two months older. . .
there’s all that humanity
of bars and burlesque shows. . .
gritty love,
all upsidedown in the void God bless them, but. . .
you and me
forever we know. . .
O
ever youthful,
O ever
weeping.”
c. 2001
∆ Appeared in Wild Poets: ‘best of’ (Seattle)
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