Robert Smith can be just as
heart-stirringly depressing when
he’s just singing out the screen
door window down into the court-
yard. Somebody just had the precious
wherewithal to notice how his own (the
room from which he’s singing very live)
window is open just so (the window that is,
I might more correctly relay is the one window
that emanates from the room in which he’s crooning.
The one window that’s connected to the room in
which Mister Robert Smith is crooning! Never lose
sight!), the room he is singing within these 5 stories
of very small rooms (the courtyard, the unex-
pectedly acoustics – meaning horrible or fan-
tastic and everything in between – of the
courtyard smushed against [almost] the open
courtyard window themselves – we are truly
neighbors in this, this transitional housing venue
where Robert Smith has taken to crooning from
within the very heart of the structure.) There’s rain
presently forecasted and there’s rain now, forecasted
for days on end, in fact. This happens in San
Francisco. Is Mr. Smith chagrined? That’s just
a joke. I’m sure he’s immune to, if not in love with,
the rain, in general. As it builds upon or flavors his crooning.
Any nobody could stand anywhere in the vicinity and say that it
perhaps might be tomorrow, perhaps the next day, perhaps the
following or simply that the next several weeks are
game, or else he’ll be gone, but Mr. Smith seems not to
recognize that he’s even making an event. An event.
At a transitional housing facility. At MY transitional
housing facility. In San Francisco this week. But, no.
The final several weeks shall be more dramatic, I'd say.
(Note to self: is it time that I begin adding “if you like
this sort of thing” -- no no no!! This is a magnificent
opportunity. Of what portion I’ve no idea at the
moment. But we’ll get there. And we’ll all get there
together.) (Notes to self: How many of the tenants
know who Robert Smith is? How many care? I
know there’s an 80’s song fanatic that resides in
a room through a window directly across the court
yard from my own – or in the general vicinity.
Should I introduce them? And is there a link
between Robert Smith, homelessness, harm re-
duction [and here I’m surely grasping] and/or
anything San Francisco that is relevant. Repeat,
is ANYTHING relevant here. Ooh, he’s still crooning this
afternoon. Good ones, Mister Smith. This is most
definitely relevant. And great ones indeed. Then
it hits me like a ton of reverb that I’ve been avoiding
you, my darling, for quite some time, even if you do yet
barely exist. But you do, oh you purple bear you. And YOU
remember that the theme at tonight’s disco-
teque is PURPLE ROOM. You haven’t begun
to think about a costume of course, much less
the concept for the grand entrance hallway (a clumsy
one, always, and yet the theme of clumsy conversation
that makes up about half of the after-party talk.
Is it that nobody’s high yet, maybe?). But I am
so swimming with, well, if not ideas, then notions that
this whole thing can be brought together for the good
of everyone, should something purple walk out of my
closet and say, “Del, I’ve got it.”… Well, no such thing
happens, at least poste haste. However, as if on
breakthrough, you realize that this is exactly what
you’ve always been working your way towards;
or at least sidling your career practically along-
side (and I’d say that the crash details of this “into”
are about to be known around the world. Or at least
around ours. And Mr. Smith’s. Or maybe not Mr.
Smith’s. He’s wonderfully out of touch.) And.
It’s your call if not calling. And I see this written
all over your face like a map so in wonder of this
world of potential that, well, it has a world, a geo-
graphy of of potential. It’s your calling, you
remember. Um, and your call. You realize ASAP.
(Is it a new calling and the old calling simultaneously?
This would take a while for you, for me, for us to parse
through individually and in toto, I ca tell. I even
saw that glimmer say, with fortitude, that it’s your
profession, if you will. And it damned well will be
your entrance. A world of sighs all around.
Time will tell how things turn out in this slightly
off-beat club in the oddest part of San Francisco
(for San Francisco – I mean, the club had been part of the
‘city’s’ mainstay since I was part of the city mainstay,
which began toward two decades now (not the end of
my particular pull in the city; just this endless party). I’d
recalled with lots of funny faces, the ongoing theme of the
awkward hallway that made its ways from the slightly
off-kilter parked cars, under the little umbrella—it was
always at least drizzling—then over the red carpet and
into the great indoors, and finally toward the beat of the
herky-jerky come-what-may that led to the dance floor –
oh I hear once there were gigantic round hay bales!). The
event was filled to gala-proportions that night. Even Mr. Smith
showed up, something that had been a larger part of the gamble.
And you, you’d found your profession, if you will. Even if it was
momentary. And more than anything, you’d found your entrance.
Life, we’d see once again, was to be grabbed by the balls and kissed
so desperately hard one wouldn’t know if they’d immediately be spit
up (life; the poor balls, etc.). And this we had made the god if not
grandiose thing that begins and often ends all things so fantastic.
This poem is for my lovely and exuberant...and gracious...friend of 32 years or so, Tammy Powell.
