living city streets

[revolutionR]

I'm still living on big city streets
even though I left some two decades ago
and live in this small desert town in the high desert
but in my mind I'm still walking down Market street
in San Fransisco, and Sunset strip in Hollywood
I wake up from a dream that kept me walking up
and down long streets pointing like fingers
to some point in the far distance, I never get there
I'm passing through buildings, going down sidewalks
down steps to the underground train, or up steps
to the city bus station to cross over the bay bridge
and head back to Berkeley, or I'm in L.A. in the garment
district, going in and out of little shops, run by Persians
Chinese, Mexican, people from India, I pass in and out
of stores full of fabrics of all colors, designs, material
I cross huge streets, go down passageways, and into alleys
and now I'm following that strange curvy dark woman
with the leopard pencil pants as she passes into the void

[Steve Plonk]

Thanks for this poem...Just visited my nephew with my family back in October...
All the sights, sounds, & smells of great food are still there in San Francisco.
I, too, dream about San Francisco...

[WIREMAN]

in city dreams....i too have my city dreams....always the places names are the same, but the reality is diifferent...

[dune]

Sometimes I wish I'd grown up in California. I enjoyed San Francisco-- center of that '60s "portal." I like Hunter S. Thompson's thoughts on a "wave that almost took us to a better place," before it crested and rolled back into crass indifference in the '70s. I liked San Fran, but those gnarly Joshua trees also knocked me out ...

[the mingo]

joshua trees ! 8 degrees below zero here my fucking brain is froze - joshua trees ! -

[dune]

Seriously, there's nothing quite like them. I dig 'em, hardcore. I've painted them. Written about them. Camped among them . . .

[68degrees]

Pretty much a small city guy myself. My folks never had a lock on our door when I was a kid. Nothing ever stays the same, but I'm just saying...that's how I grew up.

I lived a summer in NYC back in the late '80's. Stayed at Columbia on 121 St...walked down to Battery Park every day. Loved it, but glad I don't live there. Been to LA, been to SFrancisco, San Diego...but only to visit. Been to Boston, D.C., Denver, Chicago, Memphis, etc. But again, only to visit. I like my small town, ten minutes and I'm anywhere.

Really like the sound of this poem. I can feel the streets, I can hear them. You're a rhythm poet, and when you get a-going...sometimes I'm walking with you.

68degrees

[revolutionR]

Yeah, Fear and Loathing, I like to say that I am that hippie they picked up
on the way to Las Vegas, except I stayed for the ride, I have to say that my
60's novel 'Gone Hallucinogen Freeway' was influenced a little by Hunter T.
Joshua trees have their own gnarly beauty, I use to come out to the desert
as a kid, from Orange county with my parents, and I always loved the desert
even better then Disneyland. I have been having a lot of city street dreams
the last few nights. I began writing this poem this morning as soon as I woke up.
the last part is about the woman I had a brief relationship with recently, how
ever messed up it was, we did go to the garment district together. She wanted
buy material to make clothes with. It was a day like a dream to me. And it
was like she vanished into the void. I'm a rhythm poet because maybe I could
have been a musician.

cool

[saw]

many cities have this rich tapestry that wraps you in it's culture with lingering memories that come front and center when you are away from it....I spent a couple of weeks in San Fran back in the seventies...great city....the only other place i have lived for any length of time other than quirky Baltimore, was Key West for 8 years....a magical place back in the seventies...so pristine....a hippies paradise

nice recollection

[dune]

Here is HST's "wave" recollection . . .

"It was the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. But no explanation, no mix of words or music or memory can touch that sense of knowing you were there and alive in that corner of time in the world, whatever it meant. There was madness in any direction, at any hour. You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that what we were doing was right, that we were winning. And I think that was the handle, that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of old and evil, not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that; our energy would simply prevail. We had all the momentum, riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look west, and with the right kind of eye you can almost see the high water mark, that place where the wave finally broke, and rolled back."

[revolutionR]

I can hear Johnny Depp reading the words as I read them

I ran around Haight-Asbury in 67' for a few days, a couple times.

[dune]

A lot of critics hated that movie, but I still like it.

I think my favorite scene is the "red woolen shirt" scene in the john ...

[WIREMAN]

fuck the critics, that was a good movie

[mtmynd]

F&L had one of the worst soundtracks I've ever endured. Absolutely ruined the entire movie for me (and several others who had the same problem).

[dune]

Yeah, starting with Gilliam not being able to get the rights to "No Sympathy for the Devil."

Definitely some clunkers; the Circus Circus scenes were hard to take. And what was that "Yummy Yummy Yummy" stuff in the "Lucy" scenes?

But come on now, it wasn't that bad, was it? The White Rabbit was still the White Rabbit ...

My biggest problem (or one of them) with the film was . . . too much mumbling . . .