Today is not that good day,
I do not want to die.
I’m not a soul but a seal
in the company of seals.
We lounge scattered in the dry fountain
white stone sculpted to look random
and roughed-up like ruins.
A civic feature very modern.
They never turn on the water.
Except sometimes SFPD comes
slow and squelching clipped whoops
like a bored predator who nonetheless will
drag off those of us who will not
wake or leave our rocks.
They turn on their rainbows of water then.
And we go sit in the brittle
cackling shadows across the way
on the low granite wall along Market-
a black wall deepening
grain polished cold
unlike our dry fountain of ruins
rough and warm with daylight.
(You can look forever into ice
you can
look forever and never see the bottom.)
Then the parade passes the normal statue
pavement perhaps lined with citizens.
The Comforter has come,
a fezzed Shriner maybe or president waving
or Mother Teresa of Hollywood
somebody like that.
The water’s turned off again.
And we return again
to bicker about where we will
spread our own greasy shadows – which coarse rock will it be
where we bed and dream
cheeks pressed against sun
stone surface of sun,
our faces pale closing
trumpets of lily petal skin.