San Francisco, San Francisco,

Pull of the vast compass.
Had to touch you,
Had to tread your ground.
Had to breathe in whatever air and particles of dirt lingered among the lungs of the authors of the revolution and progenitors of the revolution that will explode from the capacitor of tired apathy when it is finally BAD ENOUGH.

Had to touch you.
Had to wet my lips on your marine fog because you called with your temple iron bell through the echoes of ink-strains and rhythm streamed forth by my mystic fathers, my protectors and guardians of my realm of experience.

San Francisco, San Francisco,

Bringing my empty offering to the altar of City Lights and leaving only as hopeful that I could be counted among the hopeful who will be shelved amid your gallery of warriors.
City lights, you beckon me like moth to flame,
Hoping for a glimpse of the perennial grandaddy survivor who harnessed the critical mass of poetry’s western Amida Pure Land big bang.

Oh San Francisco,

Whose pictures in books are crowded and dense in the multiplicity of pervasive Victorian Bay Windows.

San Francisco,

The camera does not lens you right, skirting your hills easily…
Even your Tenderloin is somewhat tender to an innocent abroad.
You have not become the choking, smoking metal hell that is L.A.

San Francisco, San Francisco,

You are as integrated as the binding wires of your streetcar grid,
and beg the question: why do others not employ your antidotes to toxicity?

San Francisco,
Do not let me leave you for long.

© 2013 Adam Lowis

The Big Windows Review 5 (Fall 2013)