A Gospel of San Francisco

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So now the tourists

have been put to bed

hiding from incoming fog.

 

The city whispers to those

who welcome the gray blanket

into her nesting hills:

 

You are all holy flotsam

washed here onto your

last shore, your only home.

 

You will always carry me

like a ship bottled

in your fragile heart.

 

Now let my foghorns

sing you sweet to sleep.

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The Guide Dream, San Francisco

 

El poeta como guía turístico dirá ustedes.

—Nicanor Parra

 

In the tour guide dream you spiral down

to the left while the sky bleeds gray.

Cold tourists, damp as seals, bark questions

in a language that’s never been spoken

on this planet, beneath this sky.

In this dream they look, they never see.

 

They swim across tarmac, run over seas.

Visitors appear soft as eiderdown,

puffy, cold. Explain that flattened sky,

they ask. Silent, you brush away not yet gray

hair and laugh as if they haven’t spoken.

They believe it all. There’s nothing to question.

 

But they point, you look. You question

history. They ask, again, if they’ll get to see

that shrine, left destroyed when words weren’t spoken

at the right time. The statue fell down

a set of broken stairs, shattered into gray

dust on the sidewalk, matching that sky.

 

You stretch your fingers, draw on the sky

but they still don’t understand that questions

don’t mean the same things here. There’s a gray-

eyed girl in the back you’ve never seen

but you know. She refuses to sit down

when you bark an order. Unspoken 

 

signals are shared like bicycle spokes. In

time that’s all that remains under this sky—

a wheel, a door, a red bus that’s fallen down

a hill too steep to climb. There’s no question—

the attempt should not have been made. They’ll see

that if the sky ever clears. It stays gray

 

as the girl’s eyes, but she’s gone. Gray

blankets are limp on the seats, and spoken

letters drop like pennies. There’s nothing to see

but they keep coming, keep dropping from the sky

keep landing, soft and damp as question 

marks beside the name you didn’t write down.

 

You scan the flat sky. It’s still as gray

as glass. Questions linger. No one has spoken

since you turned down that hill towards the sea.

 

​
 

On a Theme of Hung-Chih

 

It knows without touching things

—Lancet of Seated Meditation

 

Without breath of a sign

knowing, not touching,

a newspaper brushes a fence.

 

Wind leaks through starting

the sign of ghost breath, a kiss

of movement you know but don’t touch

 

while dust kicks out of the worksite

pushing scraps of paper down the street.

 

Without touching anything and knowing

nothing at all except a stop sign’s breath

and his shoes are visible.

 

Without touching you know

they will not move until

 

you or someone else touches them

without knowing it you will

know there’s no sign of breath.

 

​
 

His Last North Beach Tour

 

Heroic ghosts trail him, soft as flags, still hip

after decades in books. Words drop from trees

in Washington Square. They lodge in pavement.

His route’s a circle. He talks it all twice.

Spiced air floats above pale girls with dark lips.

Italian drifts on the 4 o’clock breeze.

He guides, his voice lowered—not a lament—

a prayer to honor the late Elvis Christ.

 

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Empty City

 

Because foghorns still paint the eastward sky—

piercing the pink faint light with low songs—

Because a red bridge can carry one car,

pulling the lone ferry floating to dawn—

 

Because there’s a tower and a beach called north—

One breathless walker resting at its top—

Because a rogue pyramid hides below glass

and glass light slides down its empty slope—

 

Because—forever—a kiss of lost gold—

a small promise in the cooling air.

Because she doesn’t brag, but shows off—

It’s San Francisco, West’s last prayer.

 

Mark J. Mitchell was born in Chicago and grew up in southern California. He is very fond of baseball, Louis Aragon, Miles Davis, Kafka and Dante. He lives in San Francisco with his wife, the activist and documentarian, Joan Juster where he made his marginal living pointing out pretty things. Now, like everyone else, he’s unemployed.

 

He has published 2 novels and three chapbooks and two full length collections so far. Titles on request. His latest poetry collection, Roshi San Francisco, was just published by Norfolk Publishing. Starting from Tu Fu was recently published by Encircle Publications. A new collection is due out in December from Cherry Grove.

 

A meager online presence can be found at https://www.facebook.com/MarkJMitchellwriter/

An actual web site is in the works.

 

https://norfolkpress.com/roshi-san-francisco-mark-mitchell/

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