JULY FOURTH EVERYDAY FOR P.G. & E!
(JULY 2009)
Power company transformers explode underground,
the city, the land, trapped beneath, is howling like
a werewolf that hasn’t had its dinner yet,
and those man-hole covers flying sky-high are just
the first chapter of a fat novel
Downtown San Francisco, zigging and zagging to
Polk and O’Farrell, the explosions sometimes
hurt somebody, turn off lights, turn traffic into
a video game programmed by the biggest fan
of Murphy’s Law
I ask the question—where are the next
explosions and enthusiastic fire?
Not where expected—back downtown!
I thought, perhaps hoped, Japantown might be
next, or the Western Addition The Haight
Pacific Heights Twin Peaks The Richmond,
everywhere that is anywhere,
the stations of an urban cross a-go-go
It’s only fair, we work hard, play hard,
are poor hardest of all,
and the city, the land,
it wants to play too
