12/30! On The Nose!

Tips for successful tourism include: not being a tourist
not caring if people know you're one. I'd rather get directions
than wander lonely as a cloud, I'd rather sit in the spot
that everyone drawn here like flocking voles sits because
it's worth it, even if it's not secret, I'll get it.

Like how I tell folks to check out pike place if they haven't.
The things a city owns that belong to the world, and the
things that belong to the neighbors--- I am a local at my
locals, and running numbers everywhere else.

Or I am a local everywhere, but only trust my fellow
locals at the spots I've worn in with elbows.

It is hard to share joy without sounding like namedropping,
it is hard to namedrop without ruining joy. I will glide
across these pavements I've not known before,
I will take all the pictures I need

but I'll try not to be an asshole about it.

11/30! A Scene We'd Usually Avoid!

Neckerchiefs. Cologne. Muscle relaxers-with a scent/how?
The grease in the hair and the grease in the thighs and the
grease the guy in the misfits shirt managed while sliding into
his pants. The one girl/guy couple, hottest in their near shirtlessness
by the window, attribute traffic to that.

We think the doorman suspects.

These lines of traffic-- we've come blocks just to
not get in. We are wobbling hard toward a club with
the right backbeat, we only want a slice and don't
care where we get it from.

The new city stomp, the old city hesitate.
The happy lipstick party inviting only half
of us. The crowd churned down Polk street

flying elbows, jutting knees, too much scent,
too much dirt for any where we'd go if--

but get the cameras right and
all you need is the rest of the
room and all you need is one good
picture, to say I've been here, I've
swung my fists, this is everywhere
I've been adult but so much worse,

better

10/30! Ashbury Heights!

"what's that flaming cathedral in the distance?"

this road winds like yarn. triangles and spirals and
houses clustered like apartments, apartments spread
like ramblers. Ropes around a narrowing hill.

When we talk about the city, we talk about The City.
Everything I know about this place I learned in
documentaries about Jefferson Airplane and
the film Basic Instinct. 

"you went to the mission and you got
tacos?"

a thick film of glass when we get over the
bridge from east bay, and the way that
everyone says "east bay" like a sentence,
after the show that starts awkward and ends
triumphant, the uber driver says "the city"

and the entrance feels like one
like it should, no long suburban
depression trailing into density,
too tired and building weary to
recognize.

This is not a poem about
san francisco,
it's a poem about knowing nothing
about it, but the hill, the
sillhouettes at midnight after
Oakland ends for us. It's about the imprint,
the "in a few years will Seattle seem--"

the new space forever,
frozen pizza thawing, the smell of
burning pepperoni spilling out into
the bay.