WALKING NORTH BEACH

[Published on the Dead Beats Literary Blog, December 12, 2012]


WALKING NORTH BEACH

[San Francisco, 2007]



Walking round North Beach
I realize that I am late—
fifty years too late.

I’ve missed all the right
eras, nothing left for my
kind, no place for us

who hear the diff’rent
drummer; who search for the beat,
the beat that pulses

beneath suburban
streets, unheard, unfelt by most;
who sit in quiet

corners at football
parties, bored, wanting to scream
a sonnet, or speak

only in haiku—
anything but endless blather
of suburban males.

So I walk North Beach
searching for something to fix
my soul, my trapped soul—

trapped by my psyche,
damn responsible psyche—
soul yearning to roam,

to wander and watch
life; writing all life, being
life—living, living, living.

God! I wish I could
yawp from the rooftops! I wish
I knew how to howl.