There was a little alley in San Francisco
Back of the Southern Pacific station at Third and Townsend
In redbrick of drowsy lazy afternoons
With everybody at work in offices
In the air you feel the impending rush of their commuter frenzy
As soon they'll be charging en masse
From market and Sansome buildings on foot and in buses and
All well-dressed through workingman Frisco of walk up
Truck drivers
And even the poor grime be marked Third Street of lost bums
Even Negros so hopeless and long left East
And meanings of responsibility and try
That now all they do is stand there spitting in the broken glass
Sometimes 50 in one afternoon
Against one wall at Third and Howard
It is all these all these Millbrae and San Carlos
Neat neck-tied producers and
Commuters of America and steel civilization
Rushing by with San Francisco chronicles and
Green Call-Bulletins not even enough time to be disdainful
They've got to catch 130, 132, 134, 136 all the way up to 146
'Til the time of evening supper in homes of the railroad earth
When high in the sky the magic stars
Ride above the following hotshot freight trains
It's all in California, it's all a sea
I swim out of it in afternoons of sun hot meditation in
My jeans with head on handkerchief
On brakeman's lantern or if not working on book
I look up at blue sky of perfect lost purity
And feel the warp of wood of old America beneath me
And I have insane conversations with Negroes in
Second-storey windows above and everything is pouring in
The switching moves of boxcars in that little alley
Which is so much like the alleys of Lowell and
I hear far off in the sense of coming night
That engine calling our mountains
But it was that beautiful cut of clouds
I could always see above the little S.P. alley
Puffs floating by from Oakland
Or the Gate of Marin to the north or San Jose south
The clarity of Cal to break your heart
It was the fantastic drowse and
Drum hum of lum mum afternoon, nothing to do
Old Frisco with end of land sadness
The people, the alley full of trucks
And cars of businesses nearabouts
Nobody knew or far from cared who I was all my life
3,500 miles from birth
All opened up
And at last belonged to me in Great America
Now it's night in Third Street
The keen little neons
And also yellow bulb lights of impossible-to-believe flops
With dark ruined shadows moving
Back of torn yellow shades
Like a degenerate China with no money
The cats in Annie's alley
The flop comes on
Moans, rolls, the street is loaded with darkness
Blue sky above with stars hanging high over old hotel roofs
And blowers of hotels moaning out dusts of interior
The grime inside the word in mouths falling out tooth by tooth
The reading rooms tick tock bigclock
With creak chair and slant boards
And old faces looking up over rimless spectacles
Bought in some West Virginia or Florida
Or Liverpool England pawnshop long before I was born
And across rains they've come to the end of the land sadness
End of the world gladness
All your San Franciscos will have to fall eventually and burn again
But I'm walking and one night
A bum fell into the hole of the construction job
Where they're tearing a sewer by day
The husky Pacific and Electric youths in torn jeans
Who work there often I think of going up to some of them like
Say blond ones with wild hair and torn shirts and to say
"You oughta apply for the railroad, it's much easier work
You don't stand around the street all day and you get much more pay"
But this bum fell in the hole, you saw his foot stick out
A British MG also driven by some eccentric
Once backed into that hole and
As I came home from a long Saturday afternoon local to
Hollister out of San Jose miles away across
Verdurous fields of prune and juice joy
Here's this British MG backed
And legs up, wheels up into a pit and bums and
Cops standing around right outside the coffee shop
It was the way they fenced it but he never had the nerve to do it
Due to the fact that he had no money and nowhere to go and
Oh his father was dead
And oh his mother was dead, and oh his sister was dead
And oh his whereabout was dead, was dead
But and then at that time also I used to lay in my room
On long Saturday afternoons listening
To Jumpin' George with my fifth of tokay, no tea
And just under the sheets laughed to hear the crazy music
"Mama, he treats your daughter mean
Mama, Papa, and don't you come in here I'll kill you" etc
Getting high by myself in room glooms
And all wondrous knowing about the Negro
The essential American
Out there always finding his solace
His meaning in the fellaheen street
And not in abstract morality
And even when he has a church you see the pastor out front
Bowing to the ladies on the make
You hear his great vibrant voice
On the Sunday afternoon sidewalk full of sexual vibratos
Saying, "Why yes ma'am but the gospel do say that man was
Born of woman's womb"
And no and so
By that time I come crawling out of my warm sack and hit the street
When I see the railroad ain't gonna call me 'til 5 a.m. Sunday morning probably
For a local out of Bay Shore
In fact always for a local out of Bay Shore
And I go to the wail-bar of all the wild bars in the world
The one and only Third-and-Howard
And there I go in and drink with the madmen and if I get drunk I git
The girl would come up to me in there one night
I was there with Al Buckle and said to me
"You wanna play with me tonight Jim?"
And and I didn't think I
I didn't think I had enough money
And I told this to Charley Low and he laughed and said
"How do you know she wanted money, always take the chance
That she might be out just for love or just
Out for love, you know what I mean, don't be a sucker"
She was a good looking doll and she said
"How would you like to ool your cool with me mon?"
And I stood there like a jerk
In fact bought drink, got drink drunk that night in the 299 Club
I was hit by the proprietor, the band breaking up the fight
Before I had a chance to decide to hit him back
Which I didn't wanna do anyway
And out on the street I tried to rush back in
But they had locked the door and
Were looking at me through the forbidden glass in the door
With faces like undersea
I should have played with her shurururururook dookie