Ode to San Francisco – a new poem by Stewart Acuff
by 
Written by Stewart Acuff
One legged busker;
Playing to homeless folks, tourists, passerby;
“I do blues, soul, reggae, rock. What y’all wanna hear?”
Goes by onelegchuck.
Beautiful, sharp smell of seawater blends with smell of sourdough baking.
Gray sky, cool breeze;
gray sky melting into gray bay horizon.
Strip clubs, bar after bar between old Italian restaurants and divide Chinatown from the Italian North Beach.
Art here is not for hoity-toity with their money, fresh suits and dresses.
No, art here comes up from the street, the grit of everyday folks who struggle to connect their own battles with demons to the broader human condition.
Don’t believe me, see the painters at Washington Square or meander through all the stacks on all three floors of City Lights, talk to Peter about the struggle of the Greek people against the steel of austerity, feel the still presence of the Beats bent on art that flows from the soul through the mind onto the page.
This is a city with life, with folks who mean to wring out every last drop of life’s blood.
This is San Francisco.
© Creative Commons Copyright 2012
Tags: acuff, chinatown, city lights, city lights books, city lights bookstore, italian north beach, north beach, poem, poems, poetry, prose, san fran, san francisco, SF, stewart acuff
