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un winter
stucco beside stucco
flung open garage doors
pool tables and channel 15
sweltering monday
with wool sweaters like
ambush
pretentious and full of mustache glam
ride the 9 to sunnyvale
keep my eyes closed
let the insides of my eyelids
turn red and orange
shutter flash and camera flash
first memories
open
peel
back
adjust
my brothers blue turtleneck
my sister smells like soft warm blankets
and peanut butter and honey
flash
this city is sirens
the corner store
on potrero and 20 something
across from general
where the lotto tickets plaster the walls and
girls with lip liner
buy sodas and snap their gum
wear their boyfriends hats
and brown eyes to blue
through bus windows
this city is an angry old asian women
eating crusty doughnuts
flaky pastries
in white waxy pastry napkins
on the bus
holding turnips
green onions
thousands of plastic bags
watching me over slight lids
i just cant get myself to smile
the stores on haight street
are all empty
and shop owners
girls with tattoos
thrift clad boys with hair
sit behind cash registers
and display cases full of china made
tibetan treasures
amber
and sterling
and jade
all white plastic
made somewhere else stickers
and everyones faces are stoney and solem
and uninspired
this city is a sinking ship
park benches
tagged doorways
shot out windows
busted hearts
bum spit and fish guts
lets go to china town and get drunk
cigarettes and whiskey shots
sheet marks
cleft notes love notes
notebooks piled high
bus stop waiting and calculating
he looks like someone who spends time figuring out
his odds

fast bike rides
and boys hands up your dress
balconies and blow
mandolins
and
its a fine day for the lute