Portola Paramita
Sick of the new lessons about ourselves
we took to the pier for the weekend, to dance in color,
and when the sun fired the fog around Sutro Tower
I thought of you, old queer arhat,
crying in the trash at the Mission Creek rail yard
for trains and sunflowers. You wouldn’t know this city.
It’s given up its right to be ugly.
I wanted for so long to be a sunflower,
and then I was, and peeling back the grimed petals
I found locomotive underneath, and sunflower again,
and it seemed there was no extricating flower from machine,
that form was emptiness and I was a nausea.
This is why I can’t take ecstasy.
The music says to everyone, I am,
but in pure form, only redeemed in substance
if our bodies receive, you are, from the bodies around.
The day we meet no look of recognition
is the erasing edge to come. We dance in karma.
The drums of the angels signify all
and nothing. This won’t last long.
San Francisco, 21 Sep 2025
