By Steve Heilig Crunching down the soggy North Beach alley 2 am Frisco fog overhead drunken old bum pissing on the grimy wall. What the hell, I thought and joined him at the wall, as if at an old Paris pissoir. He didn't sound interested. Never heard of him either. I said, finishing too.
Great poets die in steaming pots of shit.
I had no reply to that. He grunted again and walked towards Chinatown. The bookstore was still open Nothing else to do, I went in. Forty years too late, beatniks sat scribbling in the dim light too cheap to buy anything. Drunk young professionals, losers in the nightly meat market, kicked out of the bars at closing time but afraid to go home alone nodded off against bookshelves.