Part I: He enjoys the company of ghosts.

The morning fog was a cloak,
worn in a daily battle between good and evil.
Right there.
At the Grand Avenue crosswalk.
To the east, the World.
To the west, Otherworlds.
The Lion Gate, Chinatown.
Mission Street.
The creosote plank piers
of stevedores with nicknames
and merchant seamen
gone to space available
seagull's roost.

Heartland kids were running for The Haight.
Not him. Cool world was waiting.
He liked to walk from the terminal at First and Mission,
along the Embarcadero, through red brick canyons,
past waterfront cafes, where Broadway met The Bay.
Gillie Kaiser's mom, Cleo, would give him a sermon
waitressing breakfast at the Pier Inn.
"No school today? Sit over there. Wanna Coke?"

North Beach had seen it's glory nights.
The club scene was a happening.
Caged go-go dancers did The Jerk.
Barkers ordered squares to drop four bucks
on buck-and-a-half well drinks.
"Totally naked coeds! Get in Here!"
The Condor. Carol Doda, Live!
The Galaxy. Vince Guiraldi.
Basin Street West. Dave Brubeck.
The Purple Onion. Lord Buckley.
"Looky, Looky!" No Minors.

Around corners where the neon glow could not follow,
along Upper Grant and down the sidestreets
where Broadway divided the bankers and Bohemians.
Smoke-filled coffeehouses sheltered the
prophesies of dark poets at Columbus and Kearny.
He moved among their ghosts. Alone.
Lenny Bruce had died on the toilet
with his lungs full of liquid
and a needle full of speed.
He was going to die in a jungle.
First he would get a car,
then he would fuck his sister's friends,
then he would die in a jungle.

Part II: Ten years after he doesn't die in a jungle.

In San Francisco's advertising ghetto,
the warehouses between that same waterfront and hill,
where multi-national agencies and strategic design firms
lurk like trolls beneath bridges, the artist became a killer...
an art mercenary whose primary target was himself.
But there was sanctuary up that hill.
Art lived there.
There was the expressionist piece
scratched in the paint next to a urinal at Cafe Vesuvio.
Bookstores. Latex sculpture.
Form and function.
The danse macabre performed daily.
A matinee performance by two hundred actors
from two thousand bar stools.
Tatoo parlors. Postcards.

He bought a postcard once.
It was a painting of an artist,
in a smock and beret, painting a still life.
Madrid, 1956.
There was a glass vase full of cut flowers
on the table in front of the artist.
But the image on his canvas was different.
On the canvas was a large, red heart
with the flowers on the left.
Across the center of the heart were two hands,
a man's hand and a woman's hand.
They were holding  hands, but not that way.
No, she was offering him her hand.
Pink fingernail polish.

The artist who tatooed the postcard on his back was delighted.
He took a Polaroid to put up on the wall
before the heart had even stopped bleeding.
That was art. The entire neighborhood was art.
Painted in layers, for decades,
with the souls of people
in love-hate relationships
with themselves.

Dennis Beck