All the old ones stop me
down on Holloway Street.

“Cuppa coffee?”
“Spare a dime, thirty cents for a cuppa coffee?” 

They walk with a slow shuffle.
It hurts but they smile,
grin, one tells me:

“You know I don’t want no
coffee boy — I buys that old Irish Rose.” 

Yeah, I’ve seen the bottles
empty on the sidewalk, I say. That
stuff any good?

“Good? SHEE——IT! Boy, tha’s fine
wine. Fine wine. You get all crazy, it
make you warm — huh, you don’t even need no 
woman — and you KNOW that pussy
be good.”

I give him a dollar, after he’s
asked me for thirty cents.
He stares at it, and then me.

“You want change?”

No keep the whole dollar, I say,
have one on me.

He stares at me some more and shakes his head. 

“Boy, you is some kinda damn
fool, throw all your damn money around
on a wino. You teach chilluns? That what you said?” 

Yeah, I say, at Holloway Street School.

“You teach those chilluns not to be a
damn fool throwin’ they money away
on winos, I’ll see you.”