It's midnight

It’s midnight and I’m out!
craving chips so I’m heading down Washington Avenue
barefoot drawing up night’s heat
it’s these that sketch San Diego’s contours
not palms and Pacific mansions with vistas
and tight packed hot poor
or the sweaty Tijuana River PB throbbing
coined hills of La Jolla
but these little white alleys running between streets
concrete paved with cracks all through and grass
wire lines against orange glow sky

Once when I woke the sun was a little
fire ball and the sky all grim like tornados
Sky full of smoke and ashes it felt like a
Holocaust, my lover rolling next to me but the
sky made me feel all foreign
an alien alone alive
and for weeks the city’s old, walking around masked
more fragile than bearable and the ashes
sounded on the tin roof of Home Depot

when I went to buy spring flowers