SAN FRANCISCO POETS
Joie Cook
There Are Nights In San Francisco
There are nights in San Francisco
When even the bedbugs come out to pray
Amongst the forest that is life here
And streets I believe I’ve been on before
Become hallucinations,
Every steep hill climbed,
An applause for gravity…
Habitat – Selected Poems
1981 - 2006
by Joie Cook
Joie Cook has long been an important voice in the San Francisco poetry scene. Habitat is her first full-length book of poetry.
“Uncompromisingly lonely, this portrait refuses to paint the witnessed reality without also giving us glimpses of the essential grace and gentleness of her soul.” — Vince Storti,artist, poet and editor of 'The North Coast Review' (from the Introduction).
See Joie Cook read her poem about the trials and tribulations of living in modern-day San Francisco at the Beat Museum in North Beach, SF.San Franciso
''Retirement Community For The Young'
video created by Richard Stone
But I’ve taken it for granted
For over 30 years
The seven hills, the cable cars,
The view from Twin Peaks
On a crisp, November night…
I fall in love with cities
The way most people fall in love,
Shamelessly hopeful in the beginning,
Careless, naïve and blind…
And there are nights in San Francisco
I would wish to forget
Like a waning romance,
Waiting to crash,
Never looking back
At the wreckage behind.
© Joie Cook
Enchantment (for Vampyre Mike) by Joie Cook
Joie Cook is a performance artist par excellence and a well-known firebrand of San Francisco's poetry haunt.
Joie's chapbooks include Cash for Color TVs,Gorton Press, 1984, My body is a War Toy, Zeitgeist, 1990,
Acts of Submission, ManicD Press, 1990,Lust for Life, Mel Thompson Publishing, 1993,and her work has
also been published in other periodicals including the recently published New American Underground Poetry
Vol. 1: The Babarians of San Francisco- Poets from Hell of which she is a celebrated member.