Mark Scandrette

was a real success, a great gathering of people from the Lower Haight neighborhood, Seven and ReIMAGINE around food, friendship, poetry and music. Someone snapped this photo of me:

I have never been faithful
Always cheating and deceiving
More or less
–sometimes more and sometimes less
But my heart in these rare and reflective moments
Has always been true

On warm nights
I melt into this city
wandering down the lonely streets of China town
With the sky hanging over my head
And my feet stepping over the ground
He is busking on the corner
She checks into a San Joachim valley hotel
And I stand here imagining a time when all these buildings and boulevards will lie desolate and abandon

Sometimes I wish for what can never be
My body cries for ecstasy
She walks through the door right past me
Carrying a bag of groceries

Give me an alibi
for why I was absent from your kiss
I have touched the precipice
And slowly I am finding my way back to you

My deeper well is covered in rust
And smells like shoe leather
I dream of becoming old,
Still stuttering in the language of love–
All the way to the grave

I have never been faithful
Always cheating and deceiving
–More or less
Sometimes more and sometimes less
But my heart in these rare and reflective moments
is true

To rise in hope
And lie down in peace

To carry my portion of the work of creation
Leaving what is left unmade for another day

To be tender with my wife
Cherishing and beholding her ageless beauty

To guide my children with words and actions
Listening with wonder to all they discover

To exercise my body,
feeling the pleasure of movement, wind, speed and agility

To taste the best of what the earth produces
taking only what is needed for energy, health and longevity

To greet my neighbor with an open heart and open arms
Speaking and choosing what is good and healing

To be awake to the divine presence in all things
Dancing in delicate surrender to ancient dreams

Kids crying
Drunkards swaggering
moms yelling
men swapping drugs in dark alleys
cars crashing
people on the street
dogs and cats fighting
in all but forgotten neighborhoods

But… maybe
Just maybe
We can give the kids candy
Help the drunk
Cool down the moms
Take away the drugs from the men
Help people get out of their cars
Invite the homeless into our homes
and separate the cat from the dog
and maybe
Just maybe
We can make a haven and not a hell

–Isaiah Scandrette, Spring 2008

NIGHT (January 26th, 2008)

Through skeleton branches
the western sky fades from blue to pink
apocalypse red then starry black
and I feel the night
coming on the wind
and in the darkening gray
as the temperature drops
in minutes by degrees

Night comes like death
All the promises of the day lost
in the fatigue of twilight dusk
The shadows now lengthening
over all that is left undone

The warmth of the kitchen hearth
aroma of dinner simmering
The artificial glow of electricity
and the music on the radio
do so little to dissuade me
from the sneaking suspicion that the best efforts and ideals of my nature
now lay aborted, still born or hopelessly deformed
by the grave inevitability and the cruel withholding of your blessing

I am haunted in this witching hour
The hour when you abandon me
to the lonely voices and lingering doubts
kept hidden by the business of the day

I am desperate for comfort
In your absence
I savor of my food, cheap laughs,
fantasy film violence or the stupor of wine—
some sweat release or illicit escape
from the anger and frustration of being your unloved child
left alone in the night.
Your truancy is felt in the empty spaces
And so I rush
Past teeth brushing or bedtime prayers
to sleep and dream of other worlds
Tasting the milk of a mothers breast
Where all strivings cease
And all that has been
And all that will be
Is unmade