One day if I go to heaven…I’ll look around and say “It ain’t bad, but it ain’t San Francisco”. —(Herb Caen)

I fell right down the San Andreas Fault.
And I woke suddenly with no recollection of
the great tragedy of my death
and I believed to find myself in heaven.

For a moment, I considered the eternity of Haight
Street beneath my feet.  And that perhaps I will
walk with the Ghosts of the mighty Beats.
It was twenty seven degrees Celsius in the city by
the Bay. That’s when I thought, I truly must be dead.

And all I’m thinking is:
“Dear Allen, Here we are in heaven…”
Because I’m freckling and sunburning in the grass
and I’m smoking a joint with thirteen complete strangers,
one of which believes he’s a superhero, and he very well may be,
because if this is heaven then I guess anyone
can be anything they want.

And if this is heaven, I will damn well
have a barbecue overlooking the Golden Gate.
And if this is heaven, I’ll be cooking the steaks.
German tourists and sweet southerners
know nothing of beef.  At least not like Alberta farm girls do.
And then I’ll drink strong, craft beer until,
belly full, I pass out in the dew, forever lovely and bewitching.
Just old enough to buy beer, and listening to the liquor seller’s
fathomless echoes of “you just barely made it.”

I keep my bag, my little off-white flower child sundress,
my purple bandana in a youth hostel bunk-bed locker.
But I always lose the keys, and the bunk bed goes
near un-slept.  They always told me “you can
sleep when you’re dead” but if I’m dead, and everything
is so beautiful, and I finally feel so alive, why would I sleep?

After all, there are free bagels in the morning
and strong, moonless cups of coffee and free refills.
Who needs sleep when there are free refills?
Who needs sleep when the earth is alive for you
in the burgeoning sun, and all you feel is the presence
of the Ocean, and the salt, and the wharf pulling
your hands to them as would earnest lovers?

Why would I ever sleep when there are already some
twenty-odd-million things I can’t perceive every moment?
And I know eternity is a very long time indeed, but it’s
still not enough. You would be shocked at how little the passage
of time changes under realization of eternity.
How limited the limitless feels when you finally find
yourself holding it in your hands.

I try to see everything physically possible (and not possible)
for the rest of my life, (death?) but I still fall asleep
sitting up with at least eight bowls of sheesha smoked,
and a two-six of Canadian Club whiskey downed in the
back of a van with strangers I’ve known all my life
just as the sun begins to purple the parking lot.

And three hours later when I wake up on the most
familiar of unfamiliar shoulders, the first thing I realize
is the sun rioting through the un-tinted windows, and,
that I have missed completely the first sunrise of eternity.

The second thing I realize:
In all-time San Francisco hangovers still exist,
and I really wish the van had tinted windows.
And I’m also trapped under the heavy legs of a
peacefully sleeping German man, and my feet are
still asleep despite my being in heaven and all.

Coffee.
Don’t disturb peaceful sleepers unless you can
present them with quality caffeine.  I return with a smile,
and a shower, and full cups.  It’s so hot I can peel down
my shirt.  It’s hot in San Francisco again.  Yes, oh yes.
This must be forever.

But where is God in all this?  I cannot see him any
better here.  If I still can’t see God, and if I’m in San Francisco
alone with a typewriter, and if this is my heaven, then I must be God.
If I am the keeper of eternity, the one who holds it in her hands,
then I am God.  And if I am God, then the rest of these people with
their German accents, and soft southern voices, and
Farmer’s Markets, and bicycles and dogs on leashes must
also be God. 

What I see is real.  I produce the world.  This is heaven.

Romantics’ souls will never grow old enough to become cynics here.