SAN FRANCISCO
1988

When I wake the 
cats are still on their backs
arms in the air
Red flags flutter from the greengold rooves of Chinatown

Here on the Pacific Rim the City stutters
Builds and falls
The witch upends the globe
Snow falling on the cable cars
A 
field full of California poppies


I wake 
          with a
     Headache and 17 cats

     Last night I
               felt the earth
               shudder under the Sea of Japan
This morning Alaska shifted under the weight of young men looking
for summer work in the canneries.
                    It's a broken plate from another country the
                    Family's carried for years

I came out to its cracked edge nine
years ago
I was looking for Korea
I was looking for something to be born into
larger than
four walls
All around were the houses and the houses continued 
to be built and torn down and built again
                    Hammers in the afternoon

              
78,965 miles

The car dies at the Boss' door.

The woman gets out and
walks the Marin Headlands A
Golden eagle trapped in the air currents
The Pacific chiseling the end of the earth below
     The woman walks 
78,965 miles away from
                         Sweet Sixteen
               She leaves the body in the 
               bed where it sleeps: a
               child spelling loneliness among all the words

The lean black cat of Delano Street
               Tiny tennis at the bottom of McLaren Park
     Summer drought stripping the bark from
                    Eucalyptus trees

               :This is no weather for hats!
What are these--------?
                         Purple-----? I see them
                         everywhere 
At Pier 23 on the backwater porch  in deep 2 AM tar
               on the barge of Jazz
     prevalent and
               wild as onions and now
Coming through the trolley tunnel 
                                   Duboce to Cole
               -Purple! Purple! I would like to be
               its entire
          Tall and thin
          Gracious
          with her feet in fountains of green ribbons

     Not Naked Lady 
     swaying by the side of the road to Santa 
     Cruz
     Not Oriental Poppy that breaks apart/its
     delicate parasol crumpling with one
     light touch
          What are these
                         these
          Purple
     Dignified
          Common
               Everywhere

doubling Quad
               rupling
     persistent and increasing
     Flowers
          I see going to
                         coming back
          from the job each day?

They buried the monster here.
Where Hunter's Point meets the Bay,
          draws a bead on Alameda's Navy

Blue glowing
monster
          the fish eat
     The fishermen from Rome say in
     Standing water: The nets are empty
          And sail farther from shore
I walk to the back of the yard in
Visitacion Valleythe
unpruned grapevines wither on the trellis

and stare over the hills towards
               Candlestick
               Fireworks
The home team won
The moon does its stuff
Coming up halved, chalky
               in the late afternoon sun red with
               smoke
The pleasure boats mingle with gun boats The
carriers balance precariously in dry dock
          The waters
                    off my back porch shimmering
                    secret CLASSIFIED
                    monster they buried here (and doesn't die)
          does its stuff, too
          It's
          leaking that
          Other light

Downtown the big bank sways on its
underground rollers
The women stare out the window of the 7th floor cafeteria
counting change
imagining temperature
                    15 minutes including travel back to
Down below
the 5th floor: Wire Transfers
     a plane draws 'Pepsi' in the sky with a
thin white finger
The eyes of the computer operators
                                   roll towards the writer
The bank calls this
and the extra trip to the bathroom between breaks
          Stealing Time
The joke around the office and the favorite
treat from the candy machine is
          Payday
It's gross they say pointing at Net
     or returning with my nickel and my quarter
     The words: Sold out.

               The wharves and warehouses no longer pay the
               City's dues
               It's service and finance
Imaginary monies passed from bank to 
               bank and
          this country balancing that country
          Even the paper trail disappeared here on the 
Pacific Rim
          the women type invisible wires
          that hold the place (like ZERO)
          for oil, sugar, textiles

          It's not there
          It's not there anymore
     Simply information
The hands with
nothing to hold
               And the union boys from this old union town
               won't touch it at ten feet they say
     :the women won't organize
                                   say
     :Filipinos take the lowest jobs

               
It's such a
small
     ?Provincial
     ?    European!
               ?
Perhaps
Riding this bus you'd say
          Un or
     Third
     Wordly: a hundred
          children pour out of the trees at the
          junction of Hahn and Visitacion
          Stone the bus that takes me home
Scrawled on the side wall of Little Willie's Market a
large man with the scarf of Palestine Arm up and back as if
throwing
          :Uhuru (FREEDOM)
          at the
          thunder : It's never been this HOT before
     Thunder
     which altho rare
     is predicted
Is predictable when the
                    temperatures invert
                    in this way

At night she says we are
Dancing like lizards
                    shedding our skins
                    the raccoon's mask
Through the tunnel to Broadway
Caterwauling at the Adler Museum
               I listen and
               Bark at the dangerous sounds
A woman naked among blue flowers the
murder and fruit of sleep
               : I was dreaming the
               Cities I've slept with
          The stones and glass in the black hole of the trumpet
          The fingers of Miles Davis luminous as Marie's

                         In a dark room he
                         gives off enough light to read by    
               : I was dreaming the
Sailors at the Lost & Found get crazy drunk during Fleet Week
          Move to old ironic rhythms
     Songs from the last war when they were five and
     making bunny ears with their shoelaces

When I
first got here they told me
The dead must be buried in Colma or drown.
The horns in the alley bury someone like New Orleans
Above sea level
Bone after bone
the
music persistent as radiation among endangered chairs and
                         refrigerators and clocks on stoves and
                    preoccupied cats

The Crow
          Croupier of death
moves from rooftop to rooftop
From my back porch I see destroyers quiet as cows at dusk
move through Hunter's Point
               The men came and the women came
               West
          to build big ships under the lights painters love

They built houses on the hills, houses
colder inside than out

Everything then was
Japanese:
          the enemy
          the dead
          the insistent rain
Einstein said: For
               every action
               reaction
Marie called her discovery
               Mother
          who bred strange cruel family
          Elements
          Daughters who must destroy mother
          in order to be born

At night the wind whips rough as
horses
through the Valley
     I imagine we are approaching Patagonia
     that frigid windswept desert at the tail end of the world
An old woman on this block was born there
of a Welsh father and a Nambicuara mother from southern Mato
Grosso
     :On his ninth voyage around the Cape, father found mother.
     She was thirteen and wretched and dancing for the sailors
     at Punta Arenas
     Her language is the oldest surviving tongue in the
     hemisphere
     Her profession when father met her
     Older than that. He said he saw her soul shining through
     Her name is unpronounceable: Tlingling? tling ling? He
     says it means 
     Bell
     That is what everyone calls her

I see
movement in the hills and
     scrub of McLaren Park :Wind?

Wolves.
In a winter so severe they
descended on Paris.
                    So wrote a writer who had spent some time on
                    the Mississippi and wrote a book about a
                    woman who

                    embodied the spirit of her times

I live 
with the others in the 
tail end of the city 
Between The Rock and the 
hard place downtown 
                The old man from Malta born at the turn of the century 
                has no one to speak his dying language to 
Fog fills Visitacion Valley like a 
thousand white birds 
The City of Madame Curie is 
                over there
                inside my blackblue house 
I gather up the Birds of Paradise 
        We drive silently
        along Third Street to the channel 
        The sax player, the 
        poet, my 
        friend 
Dead three years this winter from AIDS
                 The current takes the flowers 
                We search the black water for a bird to fly away 
        Through the dense rain a lost seal barks rolled in its 
        dark rug under Lefty O'Doul's Bridge 
                        on pitchblende nights
                        Numinous and salty 
                We say Goodbye 
          Year after year 
          The earthquake comes 
          These nights 
          When the dream hasn't a doorway to stand in

It starts under the Sea of Japan and moves
West
     Year after year the
     war effort, the
     smaller eye of the villagers the
     clarinets of radioactive women

               --So I can expect  if I continue
          to receive a visit from Death?

Here is a box to soften the street.
Here is my wrist
Remove my hand and drink.
The city glows tonight.
Seven bonfires.
Light and guns like Goya's Execution.

Lessie next door plays the slowest piano.

               What is this
               GODGODGOD-----?
The bells of Samoan Catholics, American Indian 
                                        Baptists,
break their backs on the cold-blooded wind

All day the sun made plums from green stones.
Tang brought the entire family to my door to
return my wallet
               -with all the money in it!
She said the Blue Angels frightened the baby.

Crows fill the enormous fir. The lights of Geneva Towers
come on. Lessie plays
each note
like it's a tooth from someone living here.
Tang showed me a small square of cloth on a
ribbon around her neck.

There's a saint inside, she said.

Sliver of bone wrapped in sheeting.
It suggests the entire body 
sleeping and holy with trust.

The plum tree in the yard gathers the darkness into its fruit.
If I rubbed Tang's bone against the fruit
I'm certain the fruit would throw down its tree
and walk.