City

Of acceptance
Among the refuse we are all brothers and sisters
Blessed in our funk
Scavenging garbage to make
New art from old junk
We celebrate our colors and our wounds
They are ours
And through them we discover
Ourselves

City of Families
Frisbees and boca burgers in Golden Gate Park
Clan-sized gatherings blasting music and laughter
Kites, dogs, and jogging baby-strollers
In a thousand little parks and playgrounds
Children do what children do best
What so many of us have forgotten or
Rejected in favor of respectable maturity
There is no more pure expression of
Human imagination and creativity than the play
Of children
On the swings and monkeybars
This is the real music of the city

City of Business
Digital veins hum with excitement and commerce
Moneychangers and entrepeneurs
The latest gamble on the latest buzzwords
Biotech
Silicon
Cold Fusion Psychic Heart Surgery
The fog comes and goes daily
Cultures and lingos rise and fall like ancient dynasties
Empires are born and crumble
In the lightspeed madness of the information age.

City of Tears
Stinking manholes and pigeon feathers
The smell of urine
When the sun reaches in to bake the alleyways
Every day I see your latchkey children
Huddled under the freeways
Clinging together in the forgotten places
Scattered in the street like discarded pop cans
The once shiny labels now faded by weather and hopelessness
The city wraps her cold concrete arms around them
like an indifferent mother
Crippled souls and broken trust
Scars piled around their hearts like sandbags
Young boys and girls who should be stealing
their first kiss beside a picnic basket
Spitting cum for money
Just enough to fill a needle
To make the pain go away for one more day
Or maybe to get lucky and die.

City of Hope
A hundred languages and one rainbow face
Pilgrimages from every corner of the earth
End here at the new starting line
Give us one chance in a million, they say
It's more than what we had before
Big dreams sustain them on their long journeys
Big dreams, but not dreams like mine
Dreams of riches and wealth are relative
Most just want to see their
children go to school
Or to never again be awakened by artillery
Or the shouts of soldiers
A color TV would be nice too

City of Beauty
Dramas played out
In tectonics and tides
The endless battle of earth and sea
Elegantly and sometimes terribly displayed
Yin and Yang balanced in harmonious struggle
If Plato’s children had arisen here
What Gods would they have envisioned
To reflect and explain these wonders?

San Francisco
Athens of the newest age.
Mother
Bitch
Goddess
Whore
Sister
Friend
Home.