Never Been to San Francisco

Always on Market Street,

Never thinking about the end,

Red brick San Francisco dust,

Never reeking of the art.

Grandmotherly wooden houses never reveal Rome.

Golden Gate Bridge spanning the never of empire,

A finger youthful to the northern forests,

A tingling thigh towards LA's glitter dome.

Never say never in this shell grey town,

Sapped of energy in the never summer of 67'.

Never could a poet have survived such an exodus

Unless the wind carried him beyond the comic-book Haight,

To the never-never rock houses of Oakland basehead babies,

Blow-jobs and AIDS, 

Republican plagues,

The never-ending battleships to amputation Concord --

My god, the city is all cardboard!

At least LA is plastic,

Melting above the swirling always of the desert,

South of this never happening city,

I still 

Have never been to San Francisco.