Evan Kennedy

I’m oblivious to half the things going on, and when I hear my name it’s like, Oh, hey, let’s go. — TIM LINCECUM San Francisco Chronicle, Oct. 24, 2012 ❖ A weeknight baseball game pledges its ticket holders a variety of extravagant processions and dalliances, and I am only one of its frequent enthusiasts spinning the turnstiles. Evenings here become lessons in piety, a refrain reduced to the simplest expression of worthier hungers. Troublesome, splendid concerns—how to carry myself like and through the city, how to enclose myself within some private calm—engage me at every level in the open-air stadium, and I ascend each level because I sit within the cheapest. Among the wind-whipped flags, I carry out a similar lashing upon myself with my mind’s tongue, albeit with good humor since I have yet to arrive at a serious period of my life. But of all cities, this one understands bouts of seriousness, and whether someone in the clutches of such crisis decides to change his life, there will be no objection among the ticket holders. Litter swirls and sweeps itself past them. Wildly customized hats aslant on children’s heads orbit the condiment table. A bearded boy stands haloed by the glowing hoard of cut spuds sitting beneath heat lamps. Like a cascade of song, endless beverages pour from trumpetlike spouts. I am still fair-skinned, perhaps a bit queer and dangerous, but childlike—a bizarrely perfected image of masculinity and prowess delivering my sinewy frame through this. I have always been barked at by certain types go evolve. ❖ I’ve been maligned, as you and this city know, while I wreck my physique by staring down barrel-chested men. My slim body—over-extended and sickly with the blackest slice of bread it could acquire— my incredible body used to be berserk with lust but now lives in the jubilee of my meekness. The open within this could bear passage for a terrific ship of my serious griefs, but it’s fine to stay buoyant through my naïve affection. I am X years old and still talking like this—incredible. Just incredible that the calamity that is my innocence gilds a pleroma unique to the day when the earth again of this city will fall apart. Call me freak—every man is a masterpiece but what is it to confuse this many creatures. ❖ The exaltation aware that I’m no longer dressed in just flesh and blood— I found firmament between my helmet and skull. Death was learning to speak through conjecture that our skinny long-haired pitching phenom had irreversibly lost his finesse. Called my body Brother Donkey, was burdened with all that impedes resuscitation— ❖ Humility of pacing, diligence of recall, set forth for me a taxonomy of announcements by which I may sequence these feelings toward a higher order of praise. Children have been raised by wolves, and even birds are overheard to answer questions, yet few inhabit that zone which adheres a beast's meekness to a human’s persistence of self-effacement—all against a weaker physique and panic throughout asserting itself. for Jason Morris ❖ A wilderness contains no diamond. And because a diamond has been built for us, we must be distant from regions that threaten our civility. I speak about civility with a laugh, of course, but it’s good-natured. “The universe falls apart and discloses a diamond,” according to the dictation transcribed by Jack Spicer, who was not quite Francis of Assisi, though both spent their lives in despair making toys to amuse the infant Christ. Whether the voice of dictation resembled that of our home team’s radio announcer or the San Damiano cross—“Francis, rebuild my church”—is a matter of taste, such as taste in furniture. At any rate, Hunter Pence grounds into yet another double play, and we are stuck in our deference. A city could be built out from the baselines of a diamond. Far from the hospital near where I live and where Spicer died, the city’s edge meets wilderness, and my reception crackles—how’s yours. I am trying to design my solace at a point shared by different stations, but the ballpark seagulls become a menace to my anxious antenna. Most nights they circle overhead until game’s end when it is safe to ransack the leftover food, but in an inning distended past anyone’s enjoyment—a hangover’s early arrival—they settle upon the outfield. Their skepticism must be a sad sight for the rookie at bat, a spooky parody of messianic expectation. I mean we are smack-dab within a quiet, null moment of life (on earth) winding down to a supposed eternal hurrah deemed paradise. ❖ These mornings I bike within a lyrical but discreetly resonant rule where I recite a settlement among recalcitrant systems to axe the psychopomps that took the best out from us to some distant historicity. They should fear it when I am so employed. I’m recently defined as a maker of my own oxygen, haircut, and enjoyment. Today I wanted to dissolve into the Giants victory procession up Market. It’s possession of a desire to be rid of my body but also to join this party because we’ve been fledged into city living, the captivation to a melodic apokalypsis. Don’t humiliate love by doubting these poems. I had to tell myself that—

let through praise while cycling —a hill or shop to match you— the shining bay the foggy gray beneath all names and phrases let through praise while working —a bird or book to watch you— the formal sun the queerer ones lifting their heads to face you let through praise while flirting —a storm or song to patch you— the iced-down bruise the new black shoes and all the things that make you let praise through earthly city —a sibling glad to catch us— the blameless meek the faceless deep please mind your house and graces

Danger from others provoked a change in my internal law. I was no flawed creature, but the unpersuaded sure made their case with their brutality. They tied me to a fence, began thrashing the life out of me. If the meek deserve to jubilee, in what bodies are we to defend our selves and supple registers of bonum. It’s time to confess I was never cruising for this bruising but maybe just cruising toward a rapid intercession of effervescent affection that could gift a beneficent fever among us. Angels arrived to inhospitality, and I hear my body still groan in that aftermath. ❖ I am my desire. Grew up a screw-up but bucked up a fuck-up, each thing I took into my nine holes was rotting, obviously. What perils when asleep, when en route, in the sea, in the wilderness somehow I made it through. When beside myself, I spotted an antidote toward a reversal in all places my biology doomed me. True witness was clarified by my thighs, chest, and throat. To quote that it’s flesh and it’s not— Now from my 1394 Utah Street room, a couple of blocks away, a strangers’ elegy sinks toward Earth. To keep watch of community beyond a shame that stills me— We’ve been put outside the populace to offset their enmity. ❖ Singing on my way back to Assisi a sissy, I’m thrown into a ditch. It’s my bitch of a knee failing me after so much cycling that groans as though flesh has worthy feeling. These thieves think I’m a rich troubadour, despite my nasal whine and valedictory hymn— the one about poverty, or maybe I am that bad of a mumbler? Since I’m not much of a stumbler, it’s a whim to be made inert through violence cops not long ago would round up the likes of me along Market Street so thanks, men, for making this human a humble and stilled thing, alive only unto your forces. Earth will be a swallower of your corpses. ❖ Made of dirt, would I know what dirt tastes like. While I was cycling, the earth and I exceeded living bodies’ partitions. Wishing that the strewn parts of you long gone ones would reassemble in a gust of florescence and soundtracks, I promise my legs can brace for any supple clamor. If the dead all rise age thirty, at twenty-nine, still ahead is my finest glamour. Thus I became a hammer to darkest anti-matter. Thus I became a ticking time bomb of kingdom expectation in my gray hoodie and sharp teeth. for Bruce Boone ❖ Bring forth any within you to save you. So made changeless, a wave or nerve to enact its fullness. If I’m raised over waste, hold me there to vomit the meat I’ve sucked down and peril I’ve soaked in through local commotion. There is a continent San Francisco at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. What is it to be equipping for the convenience of kingdom—      such as swapping spit with strangers, giving dogs a good scratch behind the ears, or fighting from my bicycle the cars that could spell my death in the papers. And drinking milkshakes in Mission diners. A cop knelt and kissed the feet of a priest, and I threw up at the sight of that. My only security has been to garden civility in city boots scuffled along the way by impedimenta to my solace.