Blogged by Brandon Hefley as Uncategorized — Brandon Hefley Wed 2 May 2007 10:48 am
Took the five
for five hours
pushing the cougar to a hundred
on a wide open road
past all the cows
fast
asleep
in the pastures.
Dark streets
on a Tuesday
San Francisco
2am
homeless
wandering
around
while drunk college kids
hang on each other
stumbling home
from bars.
I parked in front of
the Mithila
on Sutter,
leaving an uneaten
wrapped
famous star
on the sidewalk
near the gutter
for the next bum
that walks by,
and checked in,
waking up the nightman,
an Indian
from India
Saying to me groggily
“You’re getting in late.”
Dropping the keys through the slot
at the bottom of a counter window
like at a bank.
“Yeah, long drive… Hey, where can I park my car?”
“Park here.”
He hands me a flyer
for a parking lot the hotel has a deal with,
two blocks down.
“Make sure you move your car before seven.
The street sweeper is coming in the morning.”
“Do you know if there’s any baseball games tomorrow?”
“I think the A’s are in town.”
“Cool. Thanks.”
Go to my room
turn on my laptop
and
find out
what time the A’s are playing (12:35pm).
Didn’t sleep ’til
4am
then
forced myself out of bed
into the cold
San Francisco
morning rain
to move my car.
The famous star was gone.
I drove two blocks down
to the parking lot.
I sat in the alley,
waiting for it to open
when I noticed two prosties
checking me out.
A big Asian (girl)
with lots of makeup and big loop earrings,
the other one
an Asian too,
with nice legs,
too defined,
she was probably a he,
and they were both looking at me sitting there,
waiting for the garage to open
Where Johns pick up
dudes
that look like ladies
like
the morning paper.
The big one got bold,
walked in front of my car,
bent over,
and looked at me.
I thought,
‘Up at 7am in the rain…
San Francisco has some hard working girls…’
I looked away,
he/she lingered, looking at me,
got the hint
and walked away.
They moved on,
the garage opened,
and I parked.
I slept till 11:30am,
showered,
then walked a mile and a half to
Powell St. station
and took the BART to Oakland Coliseum.
I was wearing my Long Beach shirt.
A black dude driving a delivery truck was all
A bum asked,
“Hey Long Beach, you a football player? You got any change?”
The BART exits the tunnel
across the bay…
I look out the window
and dig it:
POST APOCALYPTIC SAN FRANCISCO,
where the gang members
drive around in crude
Mad Maxian
muscle cars
firing harpoon guns
at each other
stripped
from
19th century
whaling ships
sunk in
Jack London
Harbor
by
greenpeace
covert ops–
Drive by harpoonings
are no joke
in Oakland,
that’s all
E-40
raps about.
When I got off the BART
I got hit up by a scalper.
“Long Beach, fo sho.” He said.
I gave him a little smirk and thumbs up.
“You need a ticket?”
“I got twenty bucks for one.”
“Twenty bucks?? I got a nice ass seat for you Long Beach.”
By the time I got in,
bought my breakfast,
and sat down,
the A’s were already winning in the first
from a two run double by Mike Piazza.
I finished my hot dog
drank the rest of my beer,
and enjoyed three hours of life,
chilling,
watching baseball
in a stadium I’ve never been in before.
The seats were good,
field level
20 rows back from the
Oakland dugout.
The scalper hooked it up.
In the 7th inning
there was a man on
and two outs.
A.J. Pierzynski stepped up
and got
booed by the entire stadium
like the bad guy at a wrestling match.
He took a strike,
then fouled it back:
0-2,
takes a low pitch
meant for him to chase,
1-2,
takes an outside fastball
that looks like a strike on the replay
then takes another ball
that looks like a strike
in the same place.
The replay shows it was a strike.
“Those were strikes.” I say.
The stadium boos.
The guy in front of me gets agitated,
and starts to yell,
“That was– I mean you got– Those were strikes!”
He looks back at me for approval.
“Yeah they were.” I tell him.
His leg begins to jitter.
The next batter’s former A,
Jermaine Dye.
He hits the first pitch for a two run homer.
The games tied
because the umpire’s bad calls
rattled the pitcher
and lead to a homerun.
The White Sox score three more in the top of the ninth
and
the nervous fan loses it,
stands up,
and launches into a tirade half the stadium can hear:
“You’re done blue!
You BLEW the game!
You’re over!
…We’ve got it on tape!
The evidence is on the tape!
Those were strikes blue!
Those were strikes!!
(his voice goes horse)
Go back to the Midwest and retire!
You’re mother should be ashamed of you!”
He looked back at me for approval again,
which made me laugh inside,
so I gave it to him with a nod.
I took the subway back. . .
. . . and passed people playing chess
on tables
on the sidewalk.
A guy in a wheelchair
at one of the tables
said to me,
“Hey, wanna play?”
“Nah, you’ll destroy me.”
“Come on. It’ll be fun.”
“Not for me, I hate losing.”
He laughed and I took a cell phone pic of him playing someone else.
Ate
at
Polkers
on Russian Hill…
Russian waitress
with nice ass in jeans
bending over next to me…
Walked from there
to the top of the hill
then down toward Broadway and Columbus
to buy some books
of poetry
at City Lights
by
dead
and
dying
humans
who left themselves
on a bookstore shelf,
on dying
Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s
bookshelf…
I walk in and don’t bother with the first floor
full of patrons and
hip new books
and old stuff
by the non-beats,
and Bukowski somewhere
downstairs with Fante
but I didn’t come here
for them
I came here for
whats upstairs,
the complete
Beat
library,
a humble upstairs
bookshelf
with a small stool
and every book
a body needs to
feed a starving soul with–
upstairs
freed
my aching soul
upstairs
a glowing elucidation
of
.. realizing,
…. pushing the human soul
.. closer to the
nature
of existence;
upstairs,
on that simple wooden shelf
the beginning of the new awakening;
the beats knew,
Keroauc knew,
they were all bikhus
and look at me now
their humble student
in awe of the
sacred bookshelf
they left me
upstairs
in San Francisco
tended
by
their
elder sage.
I passed him on the stairs once
when I was younger.
I could sense his
Buddhaness
and he
smiled at me as I
passed him with
HER
in my hand.
I came down stairs
and paid the dude working the register
a hundred bucks
for all the books
of poetry I took
from
the shelf.
The hipster clerk whined to the chick working with him,
“I wish I could fast forward.”
“What, today?” She asked.
“Life.” He said.
And I thought he was talking about the lame song
playing in the background.
“Take it easy guys.” I say to them.
“Bye.”
And hail a cab back to the hotel.
“Hyde and Sutter please.”
The Indian cabbie laughs,
“You don’t want to go to the New Century?”
“What’s that, a strip club?”
“Haha, yeah, I was guessing you wanted to go there.”
“No, that shit’s a waste of money.”
I watched the city go by
the window
from the backseat.
I got dropped off down the street from the hotel
and bought a peach blunt wrap
and big red stripe beer
from Yogi liquor
and went upstairs to my little room in the back of the Mithila.
Smelled like weed
on the whole third floor
and I thought,
‘Damn, someone’s smoking up here…
Oh wait, it’s probably from me.’
Unlocked my door
went inside and opened
the window
and rolled a trainwreck blunt,
and smoked half of it,
listening to art institute students
below me
complain about
the rising cost
of tuition,
played
some
Dr. Dre
mp3s
that I jacked
cause I’m a gangsta
like that…
Smoking indo
reading Lew Welch
faded on Jamaican beer
in a small room
in the back of the Mithila.
The next day I woke up
and took a cab to Golden Gate Park
to edit my screenplay.
I found a spot
and went over the first act,
sitting on a bench
dedicated
to a victim of Aids.
In front of me
a solemn
green grove
in memoriam
to the souls
taken by the
latest
human plague.
I paid four bucks
and walked
through the
Japanese garden,
and stood
watching the maples
dance in the wind
with the bamboo.
It was then that I could see
that I too
am a bikhu
on a path…
My mind
expanded
standing
meditating
watching the leaves
of the trees
frush and sway
in the cold blue wind
the mossy pond
-doing
. its own
. thing
-with its
reflection.
An overwhelming
moment;
I stepped back
and walked away,
lest I
find a tree
to sit under
for the next
ten years.
I took a cab
from the park
back to the Mithila,
dropped my script off in my room
and came back outside
and bought a calzone
from a little hole in the wall
pizza joint next door.
I sat at a little table
on the sidewalk
and cracked a beer in
a brown bag
thinking I was being slick about it;
an even slicker
homeless black man
with greasy hair and beard
materialized
when he
heard the sound
of the opening
of a bottle of beer
and said
grinning toothlessly at me
“Oh, well, now, you do know it’s illegal to drink in public, don’t you?”
I laughed at him.
“Well I’ll tell you what. I can get rid of that real quick for you if you want.” He says.
“I’ll give you a buck instead.” I say.
“Alright.”
“Go get a high life.”
“Yessir.” He said grinning.
Soon after,
a homeless little white woman
with thick hazy glasses
approached
pushing a cart
with a little
cage attached to it.
A cage
just big enough
for a cat to fit
and so she had a cat inside the cage,
a silverish gray cat
like my childhood cat “Silver”
that my parents took in
when I saw
“the mean old man push the cat”
off the side of the second story apartment
and ran inside
to report the evil
to my parents.
I saw it that way
as a four year old boy,
the man looked like a demon
when he smiled and pushed the cat off the side of the building.
The crazy old homeless lady
with silver cat in the cage
saw the look in my eye
or was so crazy
she could read my mind
and knew I felt
for the cat
forced to live a life in a cage
for the schizophrenic old woman’s companionship.
She stopped in front of me
like a ghost haunting the streets
and said,
“I just love my cat.
Yes I do.
I take very good care of her.
I take my cat everywhere,
and I just love her.”
Then she smiled,
and continued her journey.
My calzone was ready.
I went back inside
and he put something the size of a large pizza
folded in half
in a pizza box
and I went back to my room
and ate half of it.
I got a text
from K
reminding me there was a fight on that night.
So I went to the bar
next door
and sat down
at the end
and ordered a fat tire.
“Hey, do you mind putting a fight on for me?”
“Sure.” She grabs the remote. “Lemme see how this thing works.”
And she starts flicking through the channels
on the TV hanging above the door
looking for the fight.
The place was as dive a bar
as I was going to find in San Francisco
without going into Oakland.
I drank my beer
and watched her flip through the channels.
She got to the channel,
but the fight was already over.
“Hey don’t worry about it.
You have a satellite dish,
you’re on east coast time,
they already showed it.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“It’s all good, don’t worry about it.”
“Hey Mindy, you want a shot?” Asks the dude sitting next to me.
“Sure.” The bartender says.
He turns to me,
“You want a shot?”
“Fuck it, I’ll take a shot.” I say.
“What do you want?”
“Whatever you’re having.”
“Fernet.”
“Sounds good, I’ll have that”
Now,
I was wary of
any dudes
buying me drinks
in San Francisco
but he was sitting
next to a hot chick,
and he was already buying
shots for her
and the bartender,
so I was fairly confident
there was nothing
funny
about it,
and cheersed him
the bartender
and the chick
sitting next to him.
I took my shot
and asked,
“Hey, what’s your name anyway?”
“Walden.”
We shake.
“Brandon. Nice to meet you Walden.”
“Nice to meet you Brandon, I think I’ve seen you in here before.”
“Not me, this is my first time here.”
“You look like someone I’ve seen here before.”
“That’s a trip. I don’t think too many people look like me.”
“What was that shot I had? Brunnete?”
“Fernet. It’s a San Francisco drink.”
“What is it, a liqueur?”
“No, it’s a bitter.”
“That’s the first time I ever had a bitter.”
“It was?”
“Yeah. It was alright.
Like Jagermeister and wheatgrass.”
“It’s great for hangovers.” The hot chick says.
“Oh yeah? What’s your name?”
“Mera.”
Walden offered me a cigarette
and we went outside and talked some more
about him being a DJ,
and I tell him
I’m a writer,
but he seems more interested
that I’m from Long Beach,
and tells me things I never knew
about Sublime.
I went back inside
and he went to the bathroom.
His girlfriend
Mera
sat down beside me
and waited for me to say something.
“What do you do?” I ask her.
She leans in.
with a sultry
euro
accent.
“Right on.” I say. “Do you travel a lot?”
“I fly to Italy once a year.”
“Nice.”
“And England.” She says touching my knee. “I party my fucking ass off there Brandon.”
Walden comes back and buys another round.
We go back outside
and have another cigarette.
I go up to my room and get some weed
and come back down
and we toke up around the corner.
A drunk guy
stumbles out of the bar,
but nobody wanted any.
Chilling at a
neighborhood bar,
feeling how it would be
to live locally.
They said,
“If you weren’t leaving tomorrow,
you could have come partied with us this weekend.”
“That would have been cool,
but I only gave myself enough time
for a good solo trip
and that was it.”
“Next time you’re out here,
We’ll definitely party.”
Big city
lostness,
mysterious
collection of souls
(social groups
like birds)
following each other
through
this quick life that won’t stop passing by,
won’t stop continuing
to the end–
I can’t pull back and
still my life for a moment
each second steals my life
even when
my mind is still
and all is quiet
life rapidly approaches
death…
I purged a drunk poem that night in my room:
there’s some
rest
in the infinite space
of death
we should all look forward to going
where we were born from
doesn’t this life
feel so temporary
and physical?
Ethereal?
You were born into awareness
only to die.
If there was no point
to all this
life and death
then we would
already be dead
and would never have been born
to begin with.
I’m drunk
and lonely
in a small hotel room
on Sutter St.
after havin drinks
with
Walden
and
Mera Bukuri
from Italy and Albania
A dj
a model chick
and me
having drinks.
Now I’m drunk
and ready to sleep.
Tomorrow I drive home
down PCH.
PCH Poem
I could never write a poem
that compares
to the sight
of birds in flight
over waves
crashing against
fallen pieces of
coastal cliff
or the sound
of it all,
so permanent.
I pull over periodically
to look at it–
It makes my heart sing.
I found a nice spot
where
the road bends
and pulled over
and looked out over an untouched cove
with a giant piece
of earth sitting in the middle
of it,
waves
crashing against it–
blue sky
filled
with soundwaves
of the sound of waves
crashing
against the Earth.
I pulled out my script,
sat on the hood
of my car,
and edited
for half an hour.
Sun setting
I get in my car and drive
Sun setting
Dark orange
Illuminating
Sun setting
Passing Hearst Castle
and the last stretch
of Northern coastal highway,
Sun setting
Over Cambria
as I approach
San Luis Obispo
_Sun setting
__Sun setting
___Sun setting
ocean swallows sun
ocean glows–
It is a sunset.
