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at the end of the day the street of three thousand miles ends here, walking with literary outlaws, cruising the mission district, drifting like jack london on a park bench, lighting candles outside a record store for janis or jimi or otis or john.

looking for all my dead heroes with no place to lay my head after marching across america in a rage of adolescent joy or alienation.

everything’s holy on valencia street, or a cat named ambrose bierce. everything’s cleaned up or wrapped in plastic on valencia street, everything’s a mural of itself, or wishes it could be what it is not, or else makes me crazy.

i’m patti hearst handing out party hats. i’m a silicon valley hipster drinking up the neon, dumped by someone i thought was a friend. i’m robinson jeffers a continent away from where everything isn’t happening, isn’t going to happen, and never had a prayer of ever happening beyond the claw of eagles and crumbling cliff face of god.

lord i am resigned to it. nothing to sing, just some new unfortunate incident or misunderstanding with the law, just some glide church astronaut or hop-headed cowboy to fight with, just some phony cause or sick little three-hour cruise on an ocean of reactionary blues.

i have met the hillside strangler. i have met the SLA soldier. i have met the oakland boys carrying guns, and gloria anzaldua cradling the new language of a people in her arms like an orphan in rags. my candy apple ass is two feet deep in cracked pavement, what’s new is old again.

no expectations. no down payment. no job. no lock me up safe behind an apartment door. no freedom of the road. no jug of wine to share the true jazz with or lament. the doom of it all, the unsweet ride of it all, the lack of dope and decent incantations of it all.

and the weak sun on weak potrero hill, full of weak lies.

nobody believes this shit. I might as well be contemplating the dodgy face of henry james from the bottom of the gowanus canal, anchored in mudcake hubcaps and free-floating mobsters of love.

lord i need a new prayer. lord i am a time traveler filling in the dateline of circumstances. lord i live in a cardboard box, please send crayons. lord i cannot wrap my head around this thing, the mission is missing in action and shape and form.

lord the kinky pride, the quick uptake, the breeze and blinding firecracker light. lord the iron-muscled ghetto boys arms at the synanon gates, ready to jump a down and out white boy like me from behind.

it’s lonesome tonight, not even a ferlinghetti fireplug or a dog for a friend. someone stole the revolution and stocked it alphabetically on the shelves at city lights.

I want my copy of revolutionary letters. i want my gertrude stein and firenozzle tower. I want my scrape the sky. i want my sal paradise. i want my last wander with neal, lost down some resplendent disappearing mexican railroad track, chasing the fellaheen dream.