The Write Stuff: At Home and Far Away From

For more on San Francisco poet and musician Patty Boss, click on the title to her poem "From Market and 6th," the location of her recording studio.

Loungin’ at Boss Studios

From Market and 6th

it's too good to miss
"Art Theater"
light bulbs in pale orange
bouncing frenetically
on off off on on off
missing more bulbs than not
movies
art theater
adult entertainment
Golden Gate Theater next door
soft dark three-lane dotted road
truck generic dirty white
flashing lights on the tailgate
slow walking young men,
with hats and gloves
red sport jacket
white hooded sweatshirt
bicycle with two white bulging plastic bags on each handlebar
colorful bleeding taillights
of weary workers keeping-on
heading home, signaling the left hand turn west
proud bandana wearer, head up, walking in the opposite direction
world turned again
tsunami's washed away a civilization
where gravity boils the oceans
in the way it sees fit
Björk cries of wanting
through the large Alesis monitors
synthetic flam, metallic rim shot, backwards snares
beware, of your life walking over desert,
where yellow and white dots endless

where your hands pull my body to you
and we climb into the tumbling loft
with mattress covered sheets clean and naked,
the relief and healing we seek
for others' mistake

where the bubbling drum loop tumbles backward
and we hear the sirens coming,
let's pull the curtains down
and make some love
deep into dawn.


Boston Brownstone (far away from home)

Flowers, dinners, Creole spice
South Asian condensed steam stick to my
apartment's entry hall walls
daylight of a mild cumulous July Saturday
passing subtly above and outside the
covering of obscuring rented drywall and
short pile, wall to borrowed wall.

We inhabit this place, suck our lips to the
neutral Lucite chaperone of captive urban audience.
The mirror, the storefront window
the outer black glass reflection
the steamroom carrying passengers of
brown and black round bellies
closed dripping eyes
draping shoulders and hands
trying to shed the events of the day.

My home takes me in,
silences most chaos and assault
but keeps me here from the sun
from my family, my smiles, my future
my unknown untrespassed near future.