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Oh how I hated that third street hotel
My grandmother old and wrinkled
Sitting in the main lobby with withered
Men and women reclining on worn couches
Staring off into space with eyes like
Death warrants
The smell of death
The smell of funeral parlors filling the stale air
My grandmother pale and sickly
Her voice trembling like an earthquake tremor
Rising to hug me
Wearing her years like rosary beads

Oh how I hated those visits
Watching those old people
Walk in and out of the hotel
On their way to a Sunday walk
Or a meal at a Tenderloin cafeteria
Looking like wasted corpses
On a 24-hour pass from the morgue
Living behind closed shades
In single light bulb rooms sealed
Like tombs
Walking in circles
Like a mad conductor
At an abandoned railroad yard

Oh how I hated those
Visits with death
Seeing my own mortality
In my grandmother’s eyes
The old hotels are gone now
Torn down in the name of progress
But they will always exist
In the back of my mind
My grandmother walking the
Corridors of my skull
Reaching out to me with
Bone cold hands

These transitory images
That won’t leave me alone
Fading in and out
Like a bad movie

Worn down, depressed
I struggle in the morning
To get out of bed
Cursed with an arthritic neck
Waking two, three times a night
With a full bladder
Trudging down three flights
Of stairs to retrieve the
Morning newspaper

In and out of doctor offices
Taking pills like candy
Seeing my grandmother
In the dark gloom of that third
Street hotel
Death crouched low
Like a sprinter waiting the
Starter’s gun