San Francisco - A Pocket Guide (Poetry)

Where Tony Bennett left his heart
the city has a donor bank
of legacies, its famous sons
pickled in a culture tank

of art museum tourist traps,
trendy galleries and bars
clustering on film-set streets —
all Golden Gate and cable cars.

An architectural mix and match,
the neo-Gothic cheek by jowl
with modern pyramid. The home
where Allen Ginsberg finished Howl

commemorated with a plaque —
a passing nod to Beatnik days
when social revolution brought
new freedoms. Now the city’s gays

exhibit their creative flair,
much-fêted while another ’quake
rumbles like a napping dog,
half-threatening to spring awake.

Chill Alcatraz broods in the Bay,
empty, classed among the ‘sights’
and Maupin fills the bookshop shelves
of Ferlinghetti’s City Lights.