Draw a scene. Draw the statue of Frank Wilma.

15.

Daylight. Buses. Electric cables. Daylight is weird. 

Somewhere Frank Wilma is scratching out his new poems. I didn’t mention that at Donut Land — Little lines about everything that look like one thing. Aztec treasures, life sources, hidden notes. His life, many lives ago — in an ancient manuscript hidden at National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City. Victrolas’ long suffering phrases bent over his tiny Apple Computer, Apt. #2. Heidegger, Aleixandre and the Chinese classics by his side. Gato, melancholy and groovy, romantic and painting human scenes on the streets and the writing with the touch of a Tango singer, like Gardel, alone, wearing a cinnamon-colored fedora, long coats of Argentina. Jack, black cup of coffee, jeans and a red shirt, inky instruments of Revolution. Open window to a melting, multi-colored scream screeching and smearing by Chinatown and up, up Broadway. 

Frank, Frank, Frank!

I miss you Frank Wilma. One day your poems will come blazing back from the sky. A few blocks from Capp Street, there will be a statue of you on 24th  and Mission Street next to café La Boheme. Back on 22nd,  I’ll be waiting for you in Donut Land. 

— Johnni Capp Street.

Juan Felipe Herrera

Donut Land, Mission District, SF

Open All Night.

A “cruel pointillism” across the nation… can you decipher that?

14. 

In 1961 I ambled the Street. The famous 2044 Mission Street I lived in, me and my mother. Get up early. Step downstairs. Turn to the right. The scene is narrow. It could be something by Dufy or Manet or Seurat. Rainy sidewalks, people, people, people.  Naked papayas on wooden crates, tomatoes, chiles, bell peppers, potatoes, lettuce, apples and tangerines in tuxedos. People. You. Me. Walking to school. Ambling. Offering bodies, feverish, broken bodies. This never fades, the particles and brushstrokes still move and thrust me speckled onto the apple crates.. When I hang out with Frank Wilma it all comes back to me. When we talk, yap, smile, laugh, sometimes scribble on our notepads. We sketch the future. Bite into maple bars. Sprinkled donuts. Break time zones, laugh at the swiveling circus of nations and their uppity, cruel pointillism.

Can you search your mind and locate it? Try it. What if you don’t have it handy?

What is a person’s identity when it is “en potencia?”

13. 

Tonight, me and Frank step out of Donut Land. We head to Guadalajara de Noche. A neon lit restaurant on 24th & (probably York Street). Frank and me. There we go again. We make plans. We run through Cortazar, Pessoa (sometimes), a little bit of Neruda, a good dose of Vallejo, Desnos. and Bombal who envisioned the state of Nothingness and Becoming. I mention Gato. 

Gato, who lives on 17th said that we should put on an event at Project Artaud. I’ve always wanted to do something at Artaud. It sounds so good. PROJECT ARTAUD. It takes me back to 1966, San Diego High School, when I was into The Theatre of the Double and the ritual poetry of Antonin Artaud. That’s what fired me up— Anti-theatre. Give me another donut. Probably some maple bars. Something sweeter than a stone and Sartre. Imagine, like Antonin Artaud, being in search of your mind? We are not there yet. The Chicano (what ever you want to call it) thing —we don’t talk about that. We go on and on with the coffee. The velveteen air. A Pink donut. “Frank, you remember, you  got in trouble in Mexico for saying that each Mexican is a Chicano en potencia?” I say. He honks out a wild roll  of soprano-pitched laughs. We both honk. It was in the paper across the nation!

We head to Guadalajara de Noche, we chow down on carne asada and enchiladas. Enchiladas. That’s it. So we rap all night. We leave. I forget what we talked about. It’s one conversation. It connects with every conversation we have. You want to know why?  It’s the same conversation. The night. The Great Night.

What is so special about a Coffee House in a place like North Beach? It is special.

12.

For some strange reason when it rains, I walk to Café Trieste on Grant Street, a stone’s throw from Broadway. I’ve passed by there since ’66 when I wore caramel colored bellbottoms — with vanilla stripes. Across the street, there was a record store. They had the first Santana album. Of course, I bought it. Just didn’t have the turntable. The air, the atmosphere, the astral particles were the thing. Not the politics or the government rap. Not even questions on power. It was something else. A little bit like Donut Land at midnight. A different quantum  molecules  where everything happens and moves at the same time on your table. Your life, your lives.

Frank Listens. Then we talk about Franco Brusati’s’ latest film, Chocolate. Tomorrow, we will strut down University Ave in Palo Alto and hit the movies again. I moved into Frank’s dorm a week ago. It’s a long story. We fry steaks at midnight. Chow on mama Lucy’s Arroz con Leche.

Everything happens at midnight. In the morning, Frank Wilma reads ten newspapers. On the floor, wrapped in a sarape, I think about homework at Stanford and everything and nothing.

I am moving back to the studio. Back to the City.

A marshmallow?

11.

We usually read poems at Bookworks, on Mission Street. Jack spouts things in Russian, I think. Or it could be Italian. A ton of Jack’s  poems are translated into Italian and probably in Russian. He says, I remind him of Mayakovsky. Look up Mayakovsky. He’s a hacksaw, every word can cut down a usurper’s statue in 3.7. seconds. Jack is into that groove.  I think all of us are into that groove. Against Power & Colonization here in the District. Everything else is a Marshmallow. How would you like go to work in a factory of Marshmallows wearing a Marshmallow suit carrying a lunch pale of Marshmallow sandwiches, thinking about Marshmallows? 

Jack lives in a tiny apartment on Broadway. A cool cat. Black coffee. One thousand poems. One tiny typewriter. One thousand Beatniks with a beret. I love Jack.