Literally underground

Crawling Around In Someone’s Basement by Brett Bennett 

nothing reminds you of your mortality more than a book store four stories high. i’m not religious. i don’t feel anything in the universe but see the beauty in nature. like Kerouac’s buddhism but i find it insufferable [i want to collect all my rejection letters and pin them to the walls] but in the church in the Mission [another country of street venders and kids running across streets and cinemas all torn down, marquees remaining, cracked bulbs and empty, the neon lights off and missing, screws and dangling wires marking off the letters. “Where the police are” the grumpy color corrector said] is a church so grand you/I believe in the power of something, if just humanity itself, for creating the softly glowing alter the stained glass windows the tucked away nooks to kneel and pray. i/you touched the holy water in the shell by the door, knowing i was undeserving but overcome with something. i was a sinner in the house of God and i felt his/her/its/their power, or at least what i felt etc etc’s power did to other people how people were driven to carve some sense of meaning or beyond. i felt the power of humanity i felt the power of an idea i felt further from God and closer to us than ever there are centuries of literature behind us and libraries of books that will never have a chance to inflame your mind. from there it’s an uphill walk through the park under hills of pastel. People play with their dogs like its a normal day [for them it is] i want a part of it, the city life of black gum on sidewalks and coffee shops on street corners. there’s a blackboard steel and window cafe that serves pear juice, which i’ve though about constantly since 3 years ago when i was last there scribbling in a little notebook on a sticky counter, like i am now [on a plane middle seat next to her and an empty seat of could-have-been-a-hot-guy-but still] i didn’t get pear juice because i will be back oh! the west coast is so detached isn’t it beautiful [an aside for a boy who could live there because he is already detached oh fuck he doesn’t matter, he doesn’t matter, he does matter but not to me, not fully and completely for i’m [????] and [???] my sorry sinner self]  and so there’s bookstores with handwritten genre cards and last time i was here I wanted to be a screenwriter and bought a book i never read [if you can’t commit yourself fully and completely, i tell myself-] in one coffee shop the walls that lead to the high high ceiling are covered in photographs and it was famous even if the muttering bum [what Ti Jean said oh San Francisco, San Francisco] asleep in the back with a newspaper and the older man on his macbook would say otherwise. I sip my espresso [every small down we drove through and every big city we walked through] the bitter pure caffeine in a little teacup and saucer. I joke about injecting it straight into my bloodstream but i love presentation and ceremony and whats the point of such a legally and easily fulfilled addiction if i don’t get to make a grand show of it. Everything i own is covered in the black ink from the expensive pens I swear by and the blue ink of the cheap hotel pens i write with each carrying a teary eyed memory for i don’t want to leave san francisco i don’t want to leave the mountains and the art galleries and the buzzing creativity and history and majesty and coffee shops and tailor shops that haven’t changed since the 30s.-the sense that maybe you could do something in the moments between- i wanted all those things for us but we were only going to fade until obscurity