More Alive Than the Living
At a beer garden in Oakland
on my way to a punk show.
I haven’t eaten much
so this west coast IPA
is going straight to my head
as I watch the people and think
about Charles Baudelaire,
Elliott Smith,
and a lover from years ago
who had one of Baudelaire’s poems
tattooed down the length of her torso,
I forget which one.
Charles Baudelaire, Elliott Smith
and my lover are dead
and for now I still manage to exist
with the others here,
laughing and drinking
beneath a burning sun,
temporary and absurd.
These days the dead feel
more alive than the living
and I don’t know what to do about it
other than to finish my beer,
head out into the street,
and follow where the music leads.
Cigarettes
Sad old poets smoking cigarettes
drinking wine in North Beach bars
gazing at the pretty girls
adrift along Grant Avenue
beautiful youth smoking cigarettes
leaning on lampposts with studied
and fashionable disdain
dying men smoking cigarettes
sitting on milk crates outside
of Chinatown butcher shops
eventually it will come to nothing
eventually it will come to tears
but reach for the fire of things one last time
and then reach for it again.
His Fading Ghost
Buy my books, the old poet says,
shuffling from table to table
once the reading is done.
Buy my books, the old poet
on his death bed cries,
he whispers it with his final breath,
as if each thin volume sold
will hold off an eternity
of being forgotten
for a few moments more.
Buy my books,
weeps his fading ghost,
as if it might somehow
save him from the void.
