Listen to thisIn my last column in December I wrote about what I had learned from Albert Camus about youth and activism in Child and Youth Care. Since then I have been thinking more about work that “appeals to the senses” as Sartre said of Camus' writing, and of Camus' incredible sense of place. With the awareness that poets are some of our best activists, I worked on and revised a few fragment poems from my reflections on lost places of my youth. So many of the places have been torn down, abandoned, “temple-lized,” white-flighted, commercialized, or gentrified. Staying in touch with these feelings I believe helps me have empathy for youth who have never had a home, and/or moved from place to place. It also helps me fight to save some of the remaining places.
Like millions of others, I have also been thinking about Haiti, all the lost people and places. For now, and perhaps always, it is beyond comprehension.
Friday Night at the Sherman Theater
They turned it
into a temple
and beauty salon
The place where I went
to movies as a boy
Mr. Mac, the owner,
white bucks and sport coat
Looney Tunes
One eye closed
the other on the screen to get
a feel for Dr Strangelove
Landscapes and faces
in gasps of air as lips
and fingers explored
the Gospel of lust
Not so different really
_______
From the Basement of City Lights Bookstore
In the basement stacks
philosophy and the
rat tat tat of words
Sartre’s The Wall
beneath Duras, Camus
Oppen and Miller
The rhythms of poets
reading aloud
on San Francisco sidewalks
deaf again beyond
North Beach a refined figure
rises to a dark room
and locked door
enters the fray bent over
back to crowd
invisible key in hand
_______
Where the Landfills Used to Be
As I pass on my bicycle
the faceless inspector
sits in bib overalls in
in the shadow of a toll both
watching engine oil, toys
and appliances separated
from ground waters
in irretrievable containers
of recycled childhoods
In those days
when God was a farmer
with a straw hat
driving a cloud
Bears came to
the dump at night and
the other was
in this divide
after the sorting
_______
Driving Center Street
Once people found
a good day’s work here
on Center Street
Vibrant with box offices
and pretty girls and boys
strolling together
Glad we hadn't
moved to the suburbs
we came for the night life
from our homes
a few blocks away
Now vacant companies
and idle workers
on street corners
wait for songsters
to return from
ranch houses
not far enough away
to be in the country
______
Writing at Alterra
Back North in a
coffee shop
in Milwaukee
Dylan, BB King, passing
students, and mountain
footsteps quiet the hum
Like the traffic
in Camus sidewalk cafe
the day after
he left the Via Appia
and found self again
in the spaces in-between
where nothing
exhausted the silence
______
The Quarter
Unlike any place
I had been in my youth
before the storm
Hurricanes were
the drink of moist magnolia
and booze scented
nights of jazz
and garbage scented
aftermath mornings
in Jackson Square
Preservation hall
they called the place
I heard the wisdom
of generations
built on the high ground
above the city
that washed away
years later
_______
Once I helped people clean up after a tornado. Nothing was where it was supposed to be. Homes, furniture, photos and appliances were spread and splattered all over. Trees were down. A boat was in one of the trees still standing. The whole thing was surreal. People seemed so lost. Their faces were blank. Then, they dug in and started cleaning up. I can’t image what it is like when a country has been flattened. People who have grown up in countries destroyed by natural disasters and war can offer some insight, I am sure. Where does one start other than to relocate the self and begin to rebuild with the resilience of youth?
