Golden Exchange of Souls

Valentines and ballerinas, love and new beds. I feel incoherencies coming on, passing over. Seminal, indigent, Etruscan, parades. Dead man's debts, shredded and tossed out windows. Crowds happily shuffle through the debris of one man's life. White baseball cap in leafless tree. It's winter in San Francisco.

Down, down, down, descending Clay past Taylor; cars, apartments, a few lost people. The woman next to me idly scratches her breast. Traffic From The Left Does Not Stop. Chinatown again parts her wizened legs. A pair of panties hang in a window, a valenine heart. No getting around it. Life will not let me die today, I fear. Mercy Street is whispering from the ears of the woman next to me. Her fingers adjust the space between them. Now coming up on Bonsai Villa, a deep soothing green. Streets are slick, windows burned. Misread a store window sign as saying "Golden Exchange of Souls." Love's my yo-yo string, tugging me (reluctantly) back up.

--February, 1993 or 1994, on the 1 California
Rediscovered on the Kitchen Table, 5/25/00