The Gorko Gazette

A Photograph I Want to Paint

The end times have found us
on a Sunday afternoon in September

as we loll about these afterthought days
simply because they’re the devil
we know.

I wander the Tenderloin
and end up at Emperor Norton’s

where I sit at the bar with a quiet kinship
between myself and the handful of others

staring down their drinks
as the hours slink off to die.

It’s as good a church as any,

a temporary haven from the meaner things
the world would show us.

I like the big windows looking out onto Larkin St.

where men fight with bottles and knives
and nod off in sidewalk tents.

There’s a pretty junkie girl and she
stumbles a bit, leaning
on a wall laughing a pretty
junkie laugh

like a photograph I want to paint
as everything slides into whatever.

---

And the Sound of the Rain

Even the most beautiful things
come to such ignoble ends

and nothing you love stays with you
long enough to do any good.

It’s rough to be sure
but you learn to deal with it
or you don’t get very far.

Me, I stick around
because I like the feel of the sun
and the sound of the rain

and on better days I think

that maybe there’s another
poem left in me

and could be there’s still a chance

she’ll brush my hand
in the dark again

even if it’s just on accident.

---

EVEN OF THIS

What to do with this dull
animal fear that lives
in your blood

these brittle hours
splintering at the touch

these days ever harder
to stoke into fire

this scarecrow of failures
this one breath closer to the last
this life of useless gestures
and false portents

what to do but make a music
even of this.

---

about the artist

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 literary journals, including Rattle, The New York Quarterly, and The Chiron Review. He was a recipient of the 2013 Kathy Acker Award, and edited Cocky Moon: Selected Poems of Jack Micheline (Zeitgeist Press, 2014). His latest poetry collection, A Room Above a Convenience Store, is available from Roadside Press.

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