| Thunder Sandwich #17
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 dweeb by jeff filipski |
| EULOGY FOR BOB KAUFMAN you wore your life like a life preserver remembering forever the political chaos Vietnam, King and the Kennedy brothers tongue on fire mind carrying the music of Charlie Parker and Mingus too You dodged the lawman's bullet riding high the poetic barb to the highest of heights You walked the streets of North Beach with Edison charged eyes victim of shock treatments and the white mans lies sporing matted hair and soiled jeans that failed to disguise your nightmare dreams You fired away with satellite precision and the God's feared your magic words Your eyes boring through the living dead drugged by speed and meth reciting Whitman and McBeth walking unmasked for all to see while death the ultimate clown followed you about town oblivious to the gothic nightmares you wore like an anchor around your neck You moved through the streets of North Beach the original Bebop man Poet in residence caretaker of the clan the haunting breath of death snapping at your heels like a bloodhound closing in for the kill and when the magic of North Beach disappeared you did too moving to the black Bayview away from the zoo a living Bangladesh come true Your words to the end hard as a pair of boots echoing across the universe like King Tut's curse and when death came to claim you the angry ghosts of the Coexistence Bagel Shop beat hard in the paper hearts of every city cop the shadow of your being dancing from Chinatown alleys to downtown high rises Billie Holiday forever singing in your heart BROWN SKINNED WOMAN brown skinned young woman from the Mission struts her stuff down the street ignoring the young boys strolling macho like dreaming the cha cha cha teen gum chewing whites out where they don't belong looking, sounding like the lyrics to a bad song half-breed dog snaps at my heels doesn't know I was born here ghostly jazz sounds from the past no Irish faces left gone the way of the Indian, South of Market street Easter Sunday blues here in the Mission Christ would have liked it here |
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| ISSN: 1534-4037 |
Edited by Jim Chandler & Haze McElhenny
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