Poetry: Selections from William Taylor Jr.

Drinking Beer and Trying to Outrun dem ol' Kozmic Blues Again

I'm out here on Haight Street

in the unseemly year of 2021

 

along with the ghosts of the Diggers

and the drug-addled kids spare

changing on the sidewalks

outside of smoke shops,

 

all of us 50 years too late

for the Summer of Love.

 

I'm outside Murio's Trophy Room

drinking beer and trying to outrun

dem ol' Kozmic Blues again but Janis

can tell you that it just isn't done.

 

At the edge of the Panhandle

there's a girl with the best tits

I've ever seen, she's dancing

 

topless on the grass, out of her

mind on something, her belongings

scattered in little piles at her feet

just like it were June and 1967

 

but the flower children are long

gone and the 21st century and

the dead-eyed junkies close

in about her with no music

in their hearts,

 

oblivious to peace

and love and the rest

of that hippie

bullshit.

A Poem I Didn't Want to Write

I don't want to write a poem

about the death of Lawrence Ferlinghetti

because most everyone is writing a poem

about the death of Lawrence Ferlinghetti

and I have no particular insight into the matter.

 

But the old fellow died yesterday

at the age of a hundred and one and I can't

help but ponder it a bit while drinking beer

in the neighborhood he made his home.

 

It's a bright afternoon in North Beach

and the plague has lifted enough so that

they're opening things a bit and letting people

drink and laugh beneath the sun in little groups

at sidewalk tables just like in the olden times.

 

Old Chinese men play cards in Portsmouth Square Park

smoking cigarettes, slapping winning hands

down on cardboard tables as they always have

 

and I think how it's not so different

now than it was a hundred years ago;

 

people mill about and sing the same  

ridiculous songs,

 

we dress more badly, drive uglier

cars, yet things continue on

despite the absurdity of it all.

 

Still, I can't help but think how this

is the first sunny day in North Beach

that Lawrence Ferlinghetti isn't around to see.

 

Like I said, I didn't want to write a poem

about it, but it got to me, however

expected, this tiny drop of loss in the

endless ocean of loss that is our birthright.

 

There's magic always leaving, and leaving

nothing in its place.

 

I raise my glass to an empty sky

and drink to and because of it.

When the Girls Would be There

A year of the plague all but took out

the few remaining Tenderloin dives

that had managed to survive decades

of San Francisco rents, and it became

so I didn't know where to drink anymore.

 

Yesterday I walked the neighborhood

and was surprised to find the doors

of The Outsider at the corner of Geary

and Larkin thrown open to the streets

after months of being shuttered.

 

I had figured the place to be gone for good.

 

I went inside, a couple

of old men were at the bar.

 

An elderly Chinese woman smiled

from the other side, her husband

seated next to her.

 

They were thankful for another patron

and gestured me towards a stool as if it

were the finest table at a five star restaurant.

 

The man was all grins and nods

and his wife jiggled a bit to the jukebox

as if to suggest the party was in full swing.

 

They asked what I was drinking

and I glanced about but didn't see

anything on tap and the shelves

just held a few dusty bottles.

 

So I just said beer and she told me

Budweiser or Heineken. I chose

the lesser of the evils and she pulled one

from an icebox that sat upon the floor

 

then danced around some more to show

that things were really happening now,

the husband nodding and grinning.

 

I went out to the sidewalk

where a table propped open the door.

 

I sat and watched the junkies

and the crazies

and the generally destitute

 

go about their business.

 

When I went back in to pee

even the old men had gone.

 

The couple asked if I

wanted another and I said no.

 

They told me to come back in an hour

because that's when the girls would be there.

 

I came back in an hour and the girls

were not there, just different old men

 

and just outside the door there was someone

with their pants around their ankles

screaming in dirty underwear  

until they tripped over themselves

and fell into a puddle of something green.

 

Somebody punched Hank Williams into the jukebox

and it was almost like old times.

William Taylor Jr. lives and writes in San Francisco. He is the author of numerous books of poetry, and a volume of fiction. His work has been published widely in journals across the globe, including Rattle, The New York Quarterly, andThe Chiron Review. He is a five-time Pushcart Prize nominee and was a recipient of the 2013 Kathy Acker Award. He edited Cocky Moon: Selected Poems of Jack Micheline (Zeitgeist Press, 2014). Pretty Things to Say (Six Ft. Swells Press, 2020) is his latest collection of poetry.