You all prayed so perfectly just now
(in the growing San Francisco language)
Tomorrow, we start again with the gold…
new neighbors in the trance of spiritual infancy
newspaper people describing the way the non-white-class body stretches out on benches
how the city will sit you down next to the kindest alcoholism
spare fanaticism…a steal
in the shooting gallery that becomes a shooting gallery (or the next vaudeville congress)
accordingly, newspaper people wanting in on underground gambling shacks
maybe even in on sensible proletariat retribution
Perfectly,
from your lips to courthouse tiles…the revolution that devils do…discovered by young artists in a complexity of passing…predictable…anti- elder…easy to kill…illegitimate to Afrika
white counterculture like
a lighthouse in the middle of a prison
or ageless joke about how well religions work
where white authors have been
dreamscape for the petite bourgeoisie
who have tempers, but not dance floor tempers
who have to write fiction to redeem a neighborhood mauling
write myths about how the jungle makes its faces
makes its passports to the shelter system
mauling page after page
delivered to powerlessness
sweet honey county-line terrorism takes your neighbors
Apostle brain matter what buckets are made for…
Pray over these buckets…comment on slavery…loosen the white supply of whiskey…supply of white city…
why not shower with light
really clean the blood off of your shoes
in walled off language
quotes from the newer undergrounds
the white movie drags on
a ton of limbs made into one glass rim
into a musics of compassion
or star in the minds of the addicts who really count out here
When they talk about the summer
They make it sound like birds of prey were involved
Our next duet
Back in San Francisco making money off of drugs again
In a symmetry of rage
Breaking the news that the city did not have to die young•
This poem appears in the Spring 2022 issue of Alta Journal.
SUBSCRIBE
Tongo Eisen-Martin is San Francisco’s eighth poet laureate. His curriculum on the extrajudicial killing of Black people, We Charge Genocide Again!, is widely used as an educational and organizing tool. Eisen-Martin’s most recent poetry collection, Blood on the Fog, was published in 2021.
