 I'm gonna read maybe just one poem it's called genius loci which means the spirit of the place and That particular place in this poem is Oakland where I lived for many years Genius loci Make it the place it was then so full it's split Vision to live there in winter so late and wet Abundance toppled toward awful birds of paradise a perfusion the ripe colors of anodized metal in gutters Umbrellas smashed like pigeons bent ribs bright among black slack fluttering Chameleus pink amogos dropping into water and rotting sweet stink and did not stop The inundated eye over populous urban eye the whole place to look at it was a Footprint in January everywhere cloudy water rising to fill in the outlines and Meanwhile indoors differed by degree alone without Love loosed from God there were lovers and touch rushing in to redraw your boundaries Constantly because it was a tune you kept getting wrong the refrain of what it meant to live alone months of that and then Sudden summer sheer release streets all cigarettes and sachet Balls out tube tops low riders and belly fat the girls on the block all like oh no She didn't and girl. She did she was mad skills with press-ons and a cell phone telling him where to stick it a kid on Her hip just like that summer sheer beauty and lip gloss that smelled like peaches and you going to the store for whiskey and Condoms like everyone else on a hot long afternoon So long and hot it would just be sunburned to walk anywhere if it weren't also a pleasure Thoughtless and shiftless and horny and drunk just someone thinking summer wasn't up to anything deep and low There he was His punk ass pink as a Viking in a tight wife beater and lingering by the public pool drinking beer So sly it didn't look illegal and he wasn't a good idea But did you have a light and it seemed the whole summer went like that Taking fire out of your pocket and giving it away a ditty you could whistle It was so cliche like the numbers they gave you after and you never called the number of swollen nodes of the kissing Colds you got and later the number took all to get tested the number of the bus to the clinic the number They gave you when they asked you to wait the number of questions asked number of partners number of risks number of previous tests The number of pricks one to draw the blood the number of minutes you waited before Results and then you decided you had to get the tune right the how to live it So it doesn't kill you to take a number and wait in the long line of the city's bankrupt humanism like the bus That never comes no matter how long you wait and the grocery grocery bag breaking and if you were going to sing that one The one that sounds like all I got is bruised Tomatoes broken glass and dirty bread and no one waiting at home. Would you? Start with genius as in the spirit of a place and small as in of the back Wet in heat and the urge to touch him their skin Just visible between his jeans and t-shirt to see if he's sweating to see if he feels what you feel And if he does is that all the spirit the place will give a small thing Shared just a phrase not a whole song But something to build on and if it isn't bread and if it's sure ain't tomatoes It isn't empty is it like the signage you walk by that fronts the lakeside church of practical Christianity hawking a knowledge of God so modest it seems trivial and it isn't ever Is it the how to live it so it doesn't kill you the where to touch it the when Will genius sing your name so it sounds like a place you can live Thank you