Night is a casual friend.
Come and go, night,
Stay for a while.
Here, have a drink.
Smile and tell me the lies of the city
In the fluent background rumble of living:
In the seething love of the body
shaped like San Miguel hills in neon curves
In the Polk Gulch alleys of piss and dumpsters
slipped between ever-lit storefronts
In the stainless First street lobbies and gated condos
packed with rich, young automatons
In the bunches of leather pressed clothes
passing through the doors of dark SoMa bars
In the headlight choke of cars and buses
sparking a thousand horizontal facets
In the steam and smells of fried meat
blown into rising clouds over hilly Chinatown
In the statues and sand held together by crabgrass
slept on by homeless in the worn corner park
In the random clatter of streetcars
heralded by bells and stone shuddering
In the pointed intersections of diagonal streets
In the phallic towers clustered downtown
In the din of 24 hour Haight Street record stores
In the smoke of hookah bars and Middle-Eastern trance
In the dance and clink of Italian coffee shops
In the sidewalk cafes lit by the glow of cigarettes
In the tenderloin on the crowded steps of mercy churches
In the fish decay and seagulls huddling on the wharf
In the crush of stuccoed duplexes and Victorian homes
In the solo apartments of lone microwave meals
Lies appeal to you,
And you shelter them.
Night, don't be still,
Come and go.
You are my casual friend.
