A History of my BART Ticket
Embarcadero
In the dream of suits Jack
Spicer pleads for magic
with a Tarot card (try
Dangling Man or Fool)
taped to his ass.
Rainbow in Cup, or brandyor blood call it Words
to Jam These Signals
call it
White Rabbit in
Snowstormcall it failure call
it Grail.
Powell Street
I have no propositions. Only Magick
& Tarot cardsThe word spoke at Creation
is written between the linesin invisible ink, in space
we don’t know how
to find.A ghost is the idea of space
a quiet assertion
of existence
like shivers,
like your breath.Angels and demons work
the same way: breath on glass,
blessing or curse.Magic is indifferent to heaven
as it is to spilled salt,
mirrors and words:Abracadabra.
Arise and walk.
Be gone.
Civic Center
The lines of force
caked over with buildings, words—
At the gold dome (Willie’s)
some
light gets throughThe pigs of Gerasa are a dream
of order. Some people would run
with the pigs.
This was the trouble
with the 20th century.Hitler. Cancer. Hard-
wired for order,
can’t take it any
other
way.
Mission & 16th
You speak to me of chemotherapy
as if it were
a whore you just
woke up with and realized
there’s not
any money to pay
and she’s gone
and taken your keys & a bite
from your doughnuts, & hair.
Mission & 24th
I still think about dis-
ease. How little it’s known, how ill-
equipped we
might have thought that suffering’s
a law
but it’s a star
inside ourselves
so deep
so cool
it burns.
Colma
I think about death
with the flag at ½ mast twenty-
four hours a day
over the neat white rows of soldiers’
graves.
Does anyone die for ideas?
Did they?They’ve found their dream of order
here. We scoff at abstractions
but laugh
at incarnation.No magic
but in things—
a ghost exhaustedinto skin
A knock at the heart
A push on the lids
of white graves.