Barbary Coast

“Ruins – San Francisco Earthquake” by M. DeNeale Morgan

rush of gold carried wild

down waterless rivers

terrific street flowing

with women and whiskey

beneath bawdy hills

where the bay rollers

lapping at lawlessness

gave a dull metronome

backbeat to rinky-tink

tempo of player-pianos

insistent insidious fog

smearing yellow-lit nights

giving cover to hell-raising

gamblers and gunmen

madams and mountebanks

plying nefarious trades

a geography utterly

lacking in conscience

new paths to perdition

impenitent cobbles and

insolent boardwalks

resounded with squander

of riches and character

moving unwittingly closer

to downfall to cleansing

destruction by punishing

means of calamitous

physical forces upheaval

and fire unleashed by

the terrible earthquake

of nineteen ought six

and the barbary coast

was forever no more