Written on a Train in Italy

Perhaps it will never come out of the hilltops
and the lake filled valley will only just skip into the next day
without the fifth and final prayer.
I don't know the sound of my own stress
nor do I feel nostalgia for its written notes,
the echoes left in stone and bar tabs.

In Germany, the word for this means before dark
and full of many other excited expressions
like the supreme leader of Iran his holiness of the painted veil
and the cartooned absurdity of fourteen cherry blossoms
forever in heaven.

This is not very hard to imagine
if you know the sound of trains
moving through a tunnel.
Sustenance in the imagination of fresh daylight.

Half Moon Bay

Foggy Sunday San Francisco near the Marina
And I feel claustrophobic trapped between that moisture
And the hills and the buildings which grow taller toward
The heart. In City Lights I asked if they had a restroom
To the cashier as she left the employees’ restroom and
She said no
As if I didn’t believe in words as much as she
As if my piss was as worthless, pound for pound, as
American lager beer. The trapped room feel of this
San Francisco does not play well for the hangover. Now I
Perceive sky above the ceiling out here in Half Moon Bay.
I don’t worry for the surfers’ lives as the man with binoculars
Who calls to boats from shore that they are a threat like a cut
On the arm or a pack of harbor seals, kissing wet-suited feet
And confusing the careless Great Whites.

People are going home, but why now? There is no mass
After noon and perhaps even the sacred virgin is enjoying
The basketball game on television. Even as they all go, the high tide
Moves in like a lonely dog, begging to go home with them
To large chicken dinners with rice and family prayer. God,
You too do think of revision, and as I turn my back and face
The parking lot, you continue counting the scattered rocks
And keeping the Pacific company.

A Return to Cannery Row

Breakfast with four members of the Manson family
And they’re saying that Point Lomo, “A little private
Christian school,” is probably a lot like Harvard.

Sharpen your teeth ruddy high-grass stalkers
With night eyes all alighted and keen
For fresh pieces of you. They seemed to be able
To tell that I had smoked the night before,
Sniffing the air like religious zealots and going on about
Black gospel choirs—don’t be fooled—the mother
Dressed up like a distant outpost for 1960’s housewives
Vacuumed up in pearl and her hand reached for orange juice
Like a forgotten hand for a glass at a far. “Before I met
Your father,” she tells her two tabula absolutely empty daughters
And they grin about something else like constellations of teenage
Kabuki theater and they trade sidelong glances like masks.

The sun bursts through the haze and the trees,
Still gnarled and mocking, beckon blood soaked feet
To the beach, and I’m watching that trail out to sea
With my head in my hands as the terrible orchestra
Reaches its peak. Leave the door unlocked,
They’ll find a way inside either way. Four knives
Glint in the moonlight.