fog  (Sept 6, 2000)


Momentarily lost for a day in the San Francisco fog...
found no dust in every crevice pore and orifice,
no freezing crusty nose and sweat-soaked dirty-sock bed on a dusty floor,
no pants that stand up by themselves and start running away,
no lukewarm dishwater coffee,
no dog shit in the wood pile,
no cussing or fighting or ruinous betrayal,
no pitch-sticky grease-stained blunt-edged alkali-cracked fingers,
no boa feathers racing bottle caps to Bordello,
no muddy piss-soaked plastic bathrooms with boot prints on the seat
  and two squares of wet paper,
no public servants shining a spotlight in the tent,
no Code 48 kids crashing hard and wandering shoeless toward Sulphur...

But damn, I already miss that redheaded sunrise unicycle bugler,
rooster crowing duets with squeaky bike wheels,
bacon bacon bacon bacon sausage eggs oatmeal bacon bacon and bacon,
sweet well water filtered through pure Nevada granite,
all the rosy gin blossoms popping up at 8 a.m.,
the unmistakable fleet of $500 trucks,
clowns whacking their posts with twenty pound hammers,
silver sunlight bouncing off miles of steel cable,
wind whistling and hands stretching along miles of fence,
woodstove flames tracing little maps of dreams in red hot lacework,
painted arms pulling down the ruins of the palaces and towers of
  the highest little city in Nevada,
dust-devil cowgirls and rocket-car cowboys prowling streets that
  disappear too quickly after the road maker's compass swings around,
showering in firewater at dusk and fireworks at midnight,
nirvana in the hotsprings under an infinite spiral of stars,
and talk of brilliant projects to be continued next year,
on that golden crackled dead-level clean-slate imaginary planet?

© Bob Stahl | Home