Razor

A clogged commode, scented Cuban cologne

I grab my luggage, overheard Caribbean languages over the PA

In fading light of dying summer, oh pathetic late, transient temple of fleeting warmth

I think of that July in '99 you want me back but don't love me

You're heated orange in pretense

You cocaine crap house

Your Biscayne cigar boats.........

Razor blade cut through the blooming night

Lil' Havanna, Liberty City, Coconut Grove - I claim your hippies, I once saw Madonna there

Down to the Keys...... out to the swamp.......your bellowing green mosquito'd embers sting.

I'm not listening you 'Bastard City' - You can't have me back

I'm facing west - San Francisco way

I'm not listening - to your 'Magic City' glistening

Tis' not enough for Haight Ashbury's sway.

Restoration

It was November - the hell of angst

Teenaged spirited, unrequited love

It was 1994 - a full day's education weary road to Birmingham

In fading light I looked west.

Belinda Carlisle's 'Leave a Light On' caressed the tragedy of the trauma- that adolescent murmur

Of better wants, I-59 was slanted - Northwest

Damn, I know it - I care if you don't

I could see Coit Tower, 

The whistle hollowed chimed Jerry Rice, The 9'rs just won another title.

You red city - you demonic city.

You sexual, you artistic colonizing of colonies....dusty western colonies

My Judeo, Christian persuasions prompt me to hate you

Marrying me to Nashville, Miami, Dallas....... oh, lifeless gallery on the edge of nothings

I want everything, you're on the edge of everything

You bizarre sidewinder of western restoration, save me in one embrace

Take away Florida, humiliate Alabama

Mock the stoic, stupid hypocrisy - of 'dixieland' banal conservative thought

Oh coffin land of the unitiated, untalented

Freeze Miami - spurious blistered - orange sliced - white lined sunken backwater

With your Pacific chilled, Mark Twain' testified breeze - opiate communal delight

Protect me from all that's east - surprisingly, sinister east

Humid piss pool of drooling - languished puddles of tradition melting

as ice cream left over in false religioned tent revival seats- no one here approves of you

Save for the truest, journalist in me

Oh, Golden Gate - I'm the lover you've found - In a North Beach's sunset tranquility.

J.C.B.

8/28/2021