Mr. Mora, Corner Pocket

I came across a postcard last night that I had written to somebody nearly 10 years ago but never sent. What was on my mind 10 years ago that I felt strongly enough to write about (but never send)? Besides the normal drunken madness, I had a man on my mind that I had forgotten all about.

There is a saloon in the North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco called the Grant and Green, located (conveniently enough) on the corner of Grant and Green. There’s nothing remarkable about the G&G, bands play there at night, there’s a pool table or two and booze. Oh yeah, and there used to be this guy hovering around named Don Mora.

Don Mora was this self-defined Bukowski type, elder drunken poet, who had a knack for ruining the best laid pool plans by reciting his own work and doing a drunken little dance. It became increasingly unclear for whose benefit these impromptu readings and jigs were for.

I met Don at a time in my life when I was attracting drunken freaks by the boat load. It happened to be at a time when I was reading a lot of Bukowski, not so much for the wonderfully poetic prose, but for documenting the drunken lifestyle I was trying my damnedest to uphold. So the fates combined for me to find Mr. Mora, to find him an entertaining conversationalist – as I was drunk and a terrible pool player.

He recited some of his works, which all seemed to have the words “my almighty pen” in them. He pointed out the oil painting portrait of himself hanging in the Lost and Found Saloon next door. When I flippantly said something along the lines of, ‘we’re limited as mere men Don, but when we strive to be a force of nature, doesn’t that count for something?’ he laughed a drunken laugh, clapped me on the back and said he liked the way I thought.

Don seemed to be this near transparent ghost from the “grand” beat days of North Beach. One of the multitude on the outer orbits of that generation’s stars that continued to live in anonymity and occasionally manage a free drink in the neighborhood’s watering holes. There was a bittersweet air around the man that swam with the dark swarms of failed dreams, but burned with the tenacious intensity of dreams not let go. There was something about the guy that I connected with; a similar soul, a brother from another age.