Thom Garzone

Photo by Charles Ardinger

Berkeley

I traveled to her, a city in 1982, having just been ousted by the Army

discharged due to a two-dimensional mentality

Dim clouds rained on the homeless, pouring realization on the asphalt and paved scenes

in drops of meaninglessness etched in faces under the downpour

I encountered a woman who survived off local plants and she had haunted my poet’s soul

as I read her my work I imagined to be epics, and chanted to her the fragmented narratives of my mind

Beat writers had possessed my psyche, living among them when daydreaming amid their ghosts

peering into their images thru book covers and photos that were volumes in my bereft thoughts

The BART system became tunnels to other worlds, transferring me from the East Bay and back

a jettison from body to soul

to Sather Gate that had illuminated me at the foot of the university

Once a streetwalker saw me in my crew cut, and thinking I had cash

offered herself to me for the military discount of $15.00

And it was Oakland’s darkness that always led me back to her, the city of Berkeley,

college town of my dreams, a place whee the Doonesberry characters ought to live

a scene that had lived in a story of my senses

 

Photo by Charles Ardinger

Haven

How I made my first encounter, or when, I may not recall, but only where the cafe door:

12 North Harkness, Pasadena, CA, and to declare an exact time, I can only let

its cafe walls welcome me like a wanderer who seeks words, food, or shelter,

a homeless poet before I found the News Junkie. For several years I lay embedded

in their divans, my name engraved on their seat where I started an open mic

for aristocrats to emerge, writers of all cutltures and classes that converged, anachronistic

flower children who served oxymoronic coffees, where Chinese business women

tutored me in Mandarin, and elderly Czech refugees poured out their morose hearts,

a spot where an aging teeny bopper led me through my poetic journey at play with

my senses. I remember the new owners changing its name, my venue fading in the

shadows of Hollywood, Venice Beach, and San Pedro, assemblies of authors,

musicians, and philosophers entombed by time. Aside a junior college, an oasis shedding

promise secluded off of Colorado Boulevard, never caught on televised Rose Parades,

but an asylum where I consume textbooks, biographies, music, and objectionable

independent movies. I bid the manager farewell, witnessed the News Junkie become

Sexy Sadie's, and years after other names transferred, yet always a space within the

universe to ponder, write, and struggle, or dream till forming a palpable image, and

when cycled away, I only hungered this bardic paradise, beneficent sanctuary granting

light into dark academia.

Photo by Charles Ardinger

Welcome to Their World

Below the storm of a nation clashing with blind narrows

amid wondrous wealth ingrained as yet heaven

has enveloped the earth

So I ask: Why do unknown souls hide below rain,

converge on libraries shielding their meekness, a figurative

barrier to the cold, and just welcome them to read and

check their emails?

The hum of the universe prevails in our destiny,

some lost, and beg for abstractions, who toil among

the shelters of their dreams

failed by human apathy

they who have not gained from these crossroads

though sunken further in its depths

beneath the borders of loss

Wonder as I do, great becomes this gift I give from the depth of my being

& the forces of my mind