Poetry for the Doomscroll Generation
Theres a little marquee that hangs into the street halfway between Broadway and Pacific-- ‘we are itching to get away from… Portland Oregon.’ And beyond the neon awning a pruned mustache and neatly folded beanie’d gentleman drapes his arm lazily over a rail on the second story above producers and bank-looters in a jumble of elbows thrown at sternums to pull iphones from back pockets to take a photo in front of a pixelated poster of Jack Kerouac hoping someone notices how effortlessly his arm sways over the sign reading ‘do not lean on rail.’ Outside Portland Oregonians laugh when they take photos under the entrance, whose words have faded from a unifying howl of the excommunicated to the ironic death rattle of fearless expression and flash and hashtag with 401ks and full coverage dental insurance and late commutes home in $75 Waymo’s.
It’s all in San Francisco, it’s all a reel. I sit at dinner tables across beautiful women and scroll through videos of silly kittens and fatal car crashes, I’ll watch fifty of ‘em! I’ll sift through comments from looner67 and crooner420 while three times repeats “Queers of the world rejoice! The Obama Library has opened—Stressed Hot-topic tee-shirts of lost youth percolate isles demarcated Das Capital to Heated Rivalry purchased in droves fall in chic city style canvas totes never to be seen again not even by chopped shite boyfriends also chic leaves the Republican Party in shambles.” Another twelve-dollar high-ball for the lonely man greedy on his lighted gizmo—Bing—Bop—Pop the benevolent booze god demands sacrifices, beginning with your stomach lining a bottle of Advil should do nicely.
Shimmering in a ray of morning sun I woke up to Monterey Break’s salt tongue lapping between my swollen purple toes. Inquire and Ingenuity. Possibility. Canning. California is an oyster. An oyster rotting in grief from the loss of its pearl. I saw four hopeless bums hunched over a whale blubber car they’ve been working on for years. Never moved an inch! They staked their houses on it. Old America. Night. Lamps. Pin-cushioned whales. The invention of electricity. The preservation of whales. The collapse of the whaling industry. The last self-sufficient man stranded aboard a Nova-Scotia skiff.
