Posts Tagged: Visitacion Avenue
Glow shop
Before my face scraped the road,
I saw a shop that glowed.
I couldn’t get inside,
So the tender ghost without me died.
This freed me to further travel,
And continue to unravel
Secrets that I sought.
Truths that can’t be bought
In illuminated shops,
Found at bus stops,
Or drunk in bars of great divinity.
My secrets aren’t within onyx superstructures of great art,
Or in the meat sack we call the human heart.
So resting overnight I watched the shop glow.
By morning the sun rose so fast
It seemed retrograde slow.
There were places I had to go,
People I had to be.
More ghosts I had to fetch,
And a love I longed to catch.
For decades this place was a bodega (the Coca Cola sign), then a retail shop (the India Rose sign), now apparently it’s a private residence.
(Brisbane, California, January 2018. See my other work here and here.)
The Sky
It rained a little bit this morning.
Not much,
just a few enlarged drops,
smacking the hood of my car.
Just enough rain
for the sky to
let the Earth know
that the Sky can kill it
anytime it wants.
But the Sky keeps the Earth around
like that coaster on the dining room table,
the coaster you got in Vegas
when you were just drunk enough
to win $100 on video poker.
It cost you $200
to win that $100,
and that’s how the Sky feels about the Earth.
We banish it
and frustrate it
and fill it with
our piss
and our vinegar.
The Sky is not our cloud atlas,
(The Sky really hated that book)
and it is not the take-away menu
at your corner dipshit combini.
The Sky is
your beauty and your love.
The Sky is
the only way you’ll ever get to Mars.
The Sky is
a chest of drawers full of only bright things,
marvelous things,
things of silk and satin and Japanese whimsy.
The Sky
is your mother
and your father
and we are rather cross with you right now
and need you to knock that shit off.
Halloween at the F.O.E.
Brisbane’s chapter of the Fraternal Order of Eagles had its annual Halloween party this evening. I’m not a member, and I’ve been sick with the flu all week, but I made the effort to go for a short while to pay my respects to the friend who invited me. That’s her on the left in the first photograph below. The rest of the photos are selected scenes from the party, and a look at a part of American small-town life which may not be familiar to you…
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(F.O.E. Aerie #3255, Brisbane, California 2016)
One need not catch them all
I’m not a fan of the Pokémon franchise, I don’t play the mobile game, and don’t intend to start doing so. Still, without even trying at all I encountered a lively, free-range Pokémon whilst he was buying afterschool snacks at my local grocery store…
(Midtown Market, Brisbane, California 2016. Also published on Scholars & Rogues.)
Acquiescence
Sometimes a guy sitting and having a quiet smoke in front of a public library will tell you he does not like having his picture taken. But he allows you to do it anyway, you strongly suspect in order for you to be quiet and fuck off.
You have to respect that.
(Brisbane, California 2016)