San
Francisco—30
April
2011:
Poetic Art: Morning begins ...
These days
anyone in bed
after 10 AM
is considered
a security risk.
Ditto
anyone
up
after 10 PM.
"Rembember 911?"
Does that make
latenight
poetry
dangerous
but
daytime
bombings
okay?
"Remember 911
and put your shoes in the tray."
Shadeless and impotent
—trees cut, oil sucked dry—
few really care.
"Environment" is now
a marketing buzz word,
"green" the color of money.
Many times
I hear
the impure laugh
le rire impure
rapid
stacatto
like rifle fire.
Then I look
for the victims:
sensitivity
reason.
I am nobadic now
like a one-man army
in retreat
making and breaking camp
each day.
Thank you Bushmen,
thank you government that isn't.
The writing suffers
but that's okay;
I do not kill.
I leave that
to the banks
and their Wall Street
buddies.
"I was like,
'What the fuck,
shut up,
get the fuck out.'"
She'd heard those words
in a war movie
and liked saying them."
Dorm
Twenty-two beds
in a room
without heat
in January;
twenty-two people
breathing the same air,
people from all over the world—
Les Français, Die Deutschen, Los Sudamericanos; zhōngguórén (中国人);táiwānrén (台湾人); geuligo hangug salam (한국 사람); Americans; Australians; New Zealanders; Nigerians; Moroccans; South Africans ...
—breathing the same air;
all hacking and sick now,
any illness anywhere
now shared—
illness without borders
or doctors
in a room with 22 bunks.
Bunk you
bunk me;
get bunked for
25 US bucks per bed
550 US bucks per night
for the bank
which has lost nothing
though former schemes have failed.
And the victims?
You and me
them and us.
Fools
most of them:
laptop
cell-phone
"travelers,"
hand-held owners
self disowners
manipulated
by an industry
out for the buck, the euro, the yuán (元) ...
and touting the "virtual" experience
over the real.
In the morning
a chorus of alarms,
ring-tone novelties
without novelty
urging users
to do something
anything;
top off their accounts, perhaps.
Did Orwell just get the year wrong?
But in bed they lie
the dead of a new age
composing replies
to fantasy
text-message
offerings of love and adventure
and even travel should they get out of bed.
But silicon and software win the day.
The bed is warm;
they press SNOOZE
and dream their lives away;
updates to Facebook,
Twitter alerts
can wait.
I AM the only
BELIEVER
who doesn't believe
IT,
THE BIG LIE
when the wide-screen
TV news goes off
at exactly 11:30 PM.
They guy next to me says,
"This is really a nice place."
"What place?" I ask.
"This hostel," he says.
I think he is being sarcastic;
he gives me a strange look
when I say,
"Yeah, and they just closed the kitchen down
too. Bunch of dumb assholes!"
I'm walking down Columbus Avenue
in heavy rain
when I see a sign:
TWO ROOMS FOR RENT
INQUIRE WITHIN
I'm not in an inquiring mood;
I'm depressed and it's raining.
But later, in an inquiring mood,
I come back.
I walk up a long flight of stairs.
There is no bad smell;
that is promising.
The young Indian woman
is lying on the couch
looking very old.
"I am curious," I say,
"about the rooms
you have for rent."
She looks curious about nothing.
I talk with her through a hole in the thick glass window of the office on the second floor. A young dark-haired boy is playing in the room, her son, I presume.
The price of either, she tells me, is $40 per day, $185 per week, or $750 per month. She hands me the keys to see one of the rooms on the next floor up.
I walk up another flight of stairs;
still no bad smell.
But the keys don't fit and I have to come back. A black man is now standing at the hole in the window.
"I apologize about last night," he says, squirming before the window, trying to make an impression.
She says nothing.
I tell her the keys don't fit in 228 and she hands me another set of keys—they look like her master keys—and she goes back to the couch.
Is she perhaps experiencing morning sickness? Is she depressed or both?
This time the door opens and I examine the room.
Small single bed
far right corner of the room.
Small closet near the door on the left
no roaches I can see.
One window that overlooks
gray lower rooftop,
some soda cans
trash
on rooftop.
Walls off-white
or maybe just dirty.
Purgatory room,
I tell myself,
place to ask why
gain strength
put a life
back together
beg for forgiveness
or decide they deserved it;
look for a job
or a good excuse
reconnect with
alienated family
or write them off
like a bad loan
forever;
but forever is a long time
or at least an abstract concept
and you could really use
their money
if not
their support
and a clean pair of underwear;
So what do you do?
Become harder
or melt like butter?
Say you're sorry
with tears in your eyes
or say never!
Have a break down
or acknowledge your
limitations
and live with them?
But at $40 per day
$185 per week
$750 per month
you couldn't spend too long
doing any of this.
But my only problem
was the lack of money;
I had acknowledged my
limitations
long ago.
When I came back
the young woman
now looking completely
hopeless
was still on the couch
and didn't get up.
Perhaps she should rent that
room herself
get her life in order
and tell Rajneesh
or whoever knocked her up
to beat it.
She looked terminally hopeless.
My "Thank you"
prompted
but a slight
flutter of her hand
that lay
over her heart
and which looked like
it was preventing
the blood
from flowing out.
I walked back to the hostel
just minutes
before the kitchen was closed
for afternoon cleanup.
Grabbing a brown
paper bag
labeled with my name
and my date of departure—
Lord, please let it be soon;
how much more of this holy shit
can your servant take?—
I was able to eat lunch
on a bench outside
in the rain;
lunch fit for the weather:
cold beans
and potato salad.
The cloud of poison
money
hangs over
city
country
nation
all.
It is their
only
every
value.
Money-changer generations
ever changing
have trod, have trod ...
Mauvaises
huŕirén (坏人)
rén (人)
personnes,
any way
you look at it.
The mental deficit grows.