1 - Valencialand

The Mission, San Francisco, 1992

The streets are braided with grated youth

Rot iron teeth clasp cigarettes with ash dashing toward the tip

Spackled soot’s snuffed under foot up and down the sidewalk

A rusted toothpick crosses the street, led astray,

Attempts to crush a city bird with his cart then scuffles for a curbside scrap

In the wings, a Kool cigarette ad’s sun-bleached skin peels downward

I was just cruising through the solar igloo of Valencialand.

As I sped through red, hearing blue, looking for Violet,

I found pierced tangerine heads and rotten banana arms

Carrying shopping bags of stuffing

They’re lined up against the theater front

Beyond, the bloody drive is blotted with banks and starving babies

Strollers wheel around garbage steaming like cooked spinach

One tot’s outfit reeks of vomit unwashed for weeks

And scrambles with whiffs of cracked nuts and greasy eggs

I’m pricked a head turns from a silver Beetle

Speeds by, says hi...as a kite

Laughs with overkill and tosses a tissue out the window

Nose-blown and crumpled

Someone picks it up and pockets it

I’m kinda pissed off about these sulfur bags stalled in incubation

But I keep returning to this land of misfits

Where somehow I feel fit

— Wise Me