Portland or Watch Your Baked Goods

The hollowness of being
At the essense of suspense
And the sense of suspension
At St. Johns when the cables snap
I grive the loss of what I never had
I grieve that it wasn't.
Down on Water Avenue
Warehouses to the left and right
There is a diner under a bridge
Where they serve alligator
With the aplomb of a salmon
Dredged from the Willamette
With a Prozac in its mouth
The chrystalization of desire
And the lament of contentment
Are one and the same.
Out on the coast
Cannons wash ashore
Shipwrecked on the Columbia Reef
That doesn't even exist
A naufragio sin razon
And in a parking garage
Needles crunching under my feet
I visit the library
As social service provider
Wash my hands in someone's shower
Pay my taxes in fines
And reams of seamy pink carpet
And I think I miss Vancouver
If but for no reason than its smallness,
Its lack of repute, its isolation
Insularity is never a redeeming quality
When writ large in hills and paranoia
And failing gentrification projects
On the forgotton East Side
That bittersweet Hawthorne Avenue
Dividing line in my mind
Earthquakes every day and seven bridges
Half a million people
When will you do the math?
All the places I've never been
All the people I'll never be
Join hands at Saturday Market
Amidst the love/hate that lurks
Under the Burnside Bridge
In mittens around an oil barrel
This encomienda of gold
That brilliance of I-5 at night
Like something from the Jetsons
But my god when the sun comes out
An urban rainforest replete
With pandas in bohemia
Toulouse-Lautrec above you
And Gauguin below.