Absent Without Leave

I took little from San Francisco:
a bitter smell of almond, signatures
of Chinese suicides, women pierced,
a woman named Anne, one leg missing,
pounding our cement with steel crutches.
We would openly stare on the stoops
of our Mission wrecks, knowing she knew
we were amateur peeping toms
at the sight of a free-swinging stump.

Fearful of genetic mishap we returned
to escape plans centered on cigars
and Lower Haight fog. We too had crashed
fathers’ cars into elms and we too missed
vital items: Ohio’s terrain, the relentless
Atlantic, reasons to get up in the morning.
Even as children we loved that which was gone.
No matter how much we sweated
in the Baja heat on our Yamahas
we came back, whole and hipper.

Our mothers, teachers near Youngstown,
are too tired to call: the three-hour gap
mystifies them. The entire world
limps now we write to them. Their students
stay blind to the bliss found
in permanent repairings. We merely inhabit
our street—deep in garages, tools
for casual tinkering in hands, our boots
sink into the spilled motor oil.

On Saturdays, in cafes, we study
The Autobiography of Malcom X.
We will share directions south soon.
We see Anne steal pastry from her new lover,
another rich white guy from San Jose,
a manchild soon to wander Divasadero
on Mondays, lust
where once his blue eyes shone,
now scarred with certitude from lessons
learned firsthand: Oakland fires
will die out before they harm us and death-
trap desires will return soon
because of everyone’s lofty slippings.