Posts in Category: California
How to knit a cell phone
There are no roses for us
but the ones we make
from Japanese paper
made in China, by the way,
that we buy in vast retail spaces
stocked with glue and glitter and ribbon
and blank books of impermanent quality
with which we build volumes
of memory and dreams.
The dreams are for ourselves, supposedly.
The memory is for anthropologists, hopefully.
They’ll see how we were
then marvel at how dull it all was,
and wonder why we wasted our time
compiling scrapbooks,
seeing our children,
or writing poems.
And they will envy us that we tried,
goddamn we really tried,
and that we left behind for them
enough of a world to pity.
Calling occupants of interplanetary craft stores….
(Michaels, Colma, California, March 2018. See my other work here and here.)
Ink jets and heart attacks
She ran the dead’s carpeting
throughout the office supply stacks.
She wanted a toy, not pencils nor tacks.
She was bright, shiny cuteness
in an Office Depot®,
or was it an OfficeMax®?
You know,
wherever the corporate types go
for overpriced ink and free heart attacks…
(At Staples in South San Francisco, California, February 2016. See my other work here and here.)
The hope at the end of the year
I wish I could say
the end of the year
will erase all your pain,
make disgraces and crimes disappear,
kill the hatred on sale two-for-one at Safeway,
flood the streets with winning lotto tickets,
give us the heart to be ourselves,
let us forego religion in favor of reason,
and install a second faucet
on everyone’s kitchen sink
from which flows on demand
the finest Belgian chocolate sauce.
But that’s not going to happen.
America won’t get fixed,
won’t be America,
won’t be great or even passable,
until people like these,
good people,
sweet people,
American people,
are no longer sleeping on
concrete pillows on the streets,
seeing bullets and unicorns in their soup,
and eating manic-depressive tacos
from the labyrinths inside flaming dumpsters.
(Little Tokyo, Los Angeles, California, December 2017. See my other work here and here.)
The decent thing on Ocean Avenue
A few weeks ago in San Francisco, I had just left my favorite comics shop and was in my car about to turn south onto Ocean Avenue when I saw an old lady had fallen to the concrete on the public transport platform in the middle of the street. Before I could pull my car over and jump out to help, a young man had already reached her. As I watched I knew I was witnessing newsworthy decency, and felt like I was seeing San Francisco write a song lyric about itself and the kindness built into the way this city moves.
And so from my car I saw the young man render aid to the fallen woman. He was gentle with her and handled her firmly but without aggravating her obviously fragile state…
Then he helped the lady get her legs back under her, and reclaim the clearly-necessary cane that had somehow failed her in the first place. While this happened drivers passed by oblivious, not necessarily out of callousness but because San Francisco is a body and it’s sometimes hard or risky to step outside one’s place in its street-artery flow…
When she got to her feet, the old lady checked her hands for injuries while the young man stood by to ensure her well-being. After a few moments the woman stopped trembling and stood firm but relaxed, which in turn caused the young man to relax. When I realized everything would be okay I started my car and finally turned south onto Ocean Avenue to continue my way home…
All of this happened literally within the space of 15 seconds. I checked the time stamps on my photographs to be sure. It was a hell of a thing seeing the kind of small but powerful human episode I’ve only read about in the news or seen dramatized on TV. But this is the way we orbit each other, and sometimes need’s gravity pulls us closer together than we would ordinarily prefer because there’s a life to be saved or changed for the better.
It’s how we’re built, thankfully, and I’ll remember that and celebrate it even if this kind of decency never unfolds before my eyes again.
(On Ocean Avenue @ San Leandro Way, San Francisco, California, November 2017. See my other work here and here.)
Encounter at a taqueria
A beautiful girl,
down on her luck.
I gave her two dollars,
she only asked for a buck…
(La Mordida Taqueria, Pacifica, California, November 2017)
Reflection in a Japanese restaurant
I often look into mirrors
to view worlds we don’t normally see.
This woman in my world, for example,
at the next table over in a Japantown restaurant,
she was pretty and she was beside herself.
“That’s a great literal use of that phrase,” I thought
as I went back to eating my katsu curry.
And as I did I hoped
the woman in the mirror world
didn’t reach out and touch
the woman in my world,
as this would surely throw both worlds
into dangerous chaos and flux.
(Izumiya Restaurant, Japantown, San Francisco, September 2017)
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.
American dreaming
An older gentleman dozing in his van while a summer breeze animates an American flag and the late morning sun illuminates the multitude of second-hand clothing he had for sale at the Alemany Flea Market in San Francisco…
(Alemany Flea Market, San Francisco, California 2017)
The man who laughed t‘ai-chi
On my way to work this past Monday, I drove past an older man doing t‘ai-chi exercise by the side of a particularly busy street in South San Francisco. I broke several traffic laws turning my car around so that I could pull up to the curb in front of him to take a photograph. Luckily, I got to him just in time to capture this exuberant expression.
I’ve looked for the old man each subsequent morning since this encounter, but haven’t seen him…
(Hillside Boulevard near Lincoln Street, South San Francisco, California 2017)
I’ve been seeing red
I don’t know what it is, but the past several days I’ve been noticing people who are dressed in red. It’s pleasing, but odd, as I typically never consciously emphasize any particular color when a scene has caught my eye and I decide it’s worth a photograph. Perhaps it’s my subconscious manifesting the abundant anger I’ve been feeling about my wife’s recent medical traumas and the death of my cat, among other things.
Nevertheless, I take photographs to celebrate moments in life that appeal to me and that you might also cherish, or at least find interesting. So here’s some glorious red, though the color is not so glorious as the people wearing it…
A woman crossing Webster Street while Fell Street traffic zooms by in San Francisco on March 28th.
An stylish youth in Geneva Avenue traffic near Mission Street in San Francisco on March 29th.
At a Safeway in South San Francisco on March 31st.
(San Francisco and South San Francisco, California 2017)