Square City Surrounded by Hope
written by: H.E. Ross
Back in the day
memories of the lucky times
in circuits of thrills
finger brushes on congas
cold butts on misty streets
warm wines passed lip to lip
from clear round jugs
with a wino on the label
San Francisco’s golden hues
pastel mornings drifting higher
clear bay and waters
green lush hills
chaotic winding asphalt streets
South of Market North Beach
Western Addition Dog Patch
Golden gateway to sunset
Way South and East
where the Mississippi spills
New Orleans’ sad laughter
of Haitian invasion
passing over to East
landing on hard masts out West
a call of the conch to breathless winds
a swish of the palm to rattling swords
Drum beats to horns shout
Dambala’s Erzuli’s latin beat
brings the Blues into Jazz
into progressive free musics
spreads a quilt generating searches
for hearts stillness of nothing preserved
screams of tinkling ice in glasses
gold in them their hills
Ships and ghosts build a jazz waterfront
pimples of whorehouses spring up dancing
on a green peninsula of Yerba Buena
smoked on Levis invented for silver mud
gold and silver dust need rinky tink
a tenderloin building a small city
arising and named for a saint of birds
hard and velvet musics take flight
I was born in the legacy of Dog Patch
without kind rules as a yella niggah
in project estates passing by trains
at the water’s unseen edge
free to roam with the touches of mothers
happy to see life no matter the hunger
sunny to see and up lift from pain
aunts cousins mothers sister
washing clothes singing blues
Blues and jazz and rococo and Bach
boxing and fighting and library palaces
and jive-ass and Chinese and Puerto Ricans
and us Bloods and them and parks
and the Bay and the vastness of a blurred
horizon of ocean’s music
and the shoreline crashings
Sitting in refuge with bay front views
arced sailers tilted in soft beats
swirling Miles Davis sea clashes of Coltrane,
Byrd, Nat and Nancy Wilson Never Never
mixed with Smokey, Temptations, Marvin Gaye,
Billy Ekstine, George Gershwin and Mongo, Willy,
Cal Tjader all on my lips throat, fingers, hips
dreams, needs, movement
San Francisco on a breezy wild wet night
of sparkling street lights and rum hazes
sifting pot smoke at the Anxious Asp,
Mikes Pool Hall, Bluenote
strolling poets, patchouli oil smog, angry wines
crowds of tourists wide-eyed at me
and them and us and all
their poetry is unknown to them
but drools of their stimulating curiosity create us
Hiding in the hills of Marin
and beside the torrential waterfalls
of the High Sierras
I write about the them the us their eyes
their hands their fear their hope their them
I write by gurgling waters and lose it
to foolishnesses under a current of wisdom
Buddha says let go
- Square City Surrounded by Hope - July 26, 2024
