Walking the City After Losing a Job

These dirty sidewalks know my kind

the same sad ghosts
with the same sad songs

and perhaps you too
know this feeling

when the world cuts you loose
and sets you adrift

as dreams of permanence
burn off like fog from the downtown
skyline

concrete sprawls out in all directions
and somewhere buried deep beneath   
is the earth

I sit in coffee shops
with the lonely
and their laptops

I wander Russian Hill supermarkets
where old men clutch fifty-cent coupons
demanding justice from green-aproned grocers

and then to the ocean
and the perfect blue
of the sea and sky

sublime and oblivious
to my tinfoil sufferings

I lie on the shore
and watch the young girls
taken by the tide

gazing at the beautiful tourists
and their sunburned hearts
that will not break for anything.