Poetry: David Francis

David Francis has produced six music albums, one of poetry, "Always/Far," a chapbook of lyrics and drawings, and "Poems from Argentina" (Kelsay Books).
He has written and directed the films "Village Folksinger" (2013) and "Memory Journey" (2018).  His poems and short stories have appeared in a number of journals and anthologies.
www.davidfrancismusic.com

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They Haunt Me

I drove throughout the city,

imagining the lives

of the poor man who jives,

of the thrifty who thrives;

I saw the window shades

across the esplanades,

the curtain rods like braids

of widows, wives, and maids;

over the railroad track,

far west, almost outback,

where the space is too black,

even with no smokestack;

the native guy who sprawls

behind weed-sprung strip-malls,

whom the widened freeway calls

to and from his revels:

a U-turn and you meet

the bombed-out boarded street

where gray-walled arcades greet

non-white-flight in defeat.

***

Revisiting the Junior College

These meters under the freeway—

you used to pay a lot

man—weren’t here because

the freeway didn’t cross above

this arced dilapidated bottom-

land where once I rolled backward

on a poker-faced bumper without

incident, stick-shift daydreaming…

figures are leaving for lunch,

lurching forward on the ledge

of the only long bridge

whose summit is a college

over a body whose wide—

for this city—brown mass

called up rivers and rafts

when I was looking forward

to retiring—a figurehead of

people waiting for the bus

in front, I take a

ramp and find myself in

a market, a station, a

passage I follow to orient

myself by coming upon recognizable

classrooms if not floors

so the first flights I skip,

by chance landing on a number

in which hall the head

of a memory, just checking

out, the character voice no

one else—I am older,

gray; he looks exactly the same—

escaping while I calm my

heart to shake his hand:

instead we go our ways,

where on the Science floor

formaldehyde and two old-style

vented restroom doors

bring certainty and déjà vu,

up to the Engineering

headquarters, a contrast, with the

personality of a plastic nametag,

until a couple behind me

huffs in late: through the

crack a woman’s instructing timbre

taunting with too-early mornings

of narcolepsy—my own delinquency

rising to the tower as

in old buildings without

skylight to the floor called

Roof—these stairs in this

chimney space rubber-stripped across

cement (someone could die

in here and no one would

use this fire hatch)—open

the door at the ground

level, exiting there and revolving

a turnstile, buying a coffee,

lost, searching for implements

among groups, hubbub, rush, goofing

off, the best-view table,

only one professor to my

right, a boy enters, invites her

to the restaurant he is

“associated with,” young men from

other lands, upon reuniting, stare

into eyes and hold hands

with friends, a girl asks

if I saw the guys

who were at my table leave,

all the chairs around have

been requested, should I stay,

watch-less, it must be time

so down the carpet past

the special seats for the 

elevator girls—all phased out

after twelve years it’s been,

they’ve changed the name:

that one orange leaf drifting,

causing the whole murky bayou

to seem clearer.

***

Lunchbreak

Latticework

and straps suspended on heels

the eating of the food

and the sweeping

straws and squinting faces

the last days of spring

the loud speaker

limping of the overworked girl

and her laughter

the fans moving

too slow to fly

and the still skyscrapers

over the last 

of the old buildings

the young man

in the corner

silent and resentful

chewing his ice

the people over the counter

perching like eagles

to swoop on their food

the women leaning, chasing

their children

smiling at the nuns

***

Aristocrat Song

it does no good

to say the refineries

are not there

or cup my ear

to the lathe

the great walls of the city

reach up and

surround the

moon

annexing it

as a streetlamp

occasionally

we gather

with coffee and guitars

some singing, some silent

with different folk

traditions

how can there be

One hymn?

it’s always uncomfortable

and

devastating

to catch a face

unwittingly

through a tambourine.

***

A Vision

I see a ship set off

from which a person waves a white handkerchief,

and the harbor flooded with sails.

But the person is bigger than the ship

which will carry him

where he belongs.

I do not see him landing, I can’t see the ocean—

only his departure

and the harbor flooded with sails.

***

Setu, January 2021