POEM FOR A FRIEND WHO TOLD ME I NEED TO STOP DWELLING ON THE PAST
A friend of mine tells me
I need to stop dwelling on the past
He says nostalgia is an anchor
Destined to drag me down
Angels have traded in their wings
For a ticket to my dreams
The phantom of the opera
Has a front-row seat in my nightmares
Carnivorous poems eat my thoughts
Pit tomorrow against yesterday
Master to no one servant to many
Old lovers juggle Molotov cocktails
Runaway with my photo albums
There is no place to flee no place to hide
No church to grant me a sanctuary
I spend the morning reading a newspaper
Tomorrow this same newspaper will be history
Should I pretend it never existed?
Two years into a drought
Not a drop of rain in sight
A leftover winter with her cold claws
Forces her way into the attic of my mind
If she were of human flesh
She would crack open my memory vault
Find miles of the past that flow
Like Li Po poems down a river old as time
Should I ignore her
Tell her to come back next winter
That now is not the right time?
I have written one too many memorial poems
For friends who have passed away
Should I shut them out of my mind
Focus my attention on tomorrow
Build a sheltered path
Leading to the Promised Land?
My emotions are trapped in quicksand
No place to run no place to hide
Endless chatter comes from the 4-walls
Where death hides between the cracks
The past is my lover
She clings to my bones like
A child to its mother’s bosom
She sleeps in my memories like
A phantom bank that accepts only
Deposits refuses withdrawals
I think of her like
I think of San Francisco
The City of my birth
The salt air smell at Ocean Beach
The Marina Greens
North Beach and the Fillmore
All filled with quicksand memories
The past has become my present
The future a gypsy fortuneteller
Hides out in the last ghost town
In America
My existence is a slow-moving train
On a journey to an empty railway yard
Where mad conductors wait
To punch tickets in the hands
Of faceless passengers