Mike Kepka

A recent Friday, 12:28 p.m.: Well after downing a cup of coffee, Zach Houston can’t peck out the next line of a new poem fast enough on his 1967 “glow-in-the-dark-green” Hermes typewriter. The caffeine amplifies a thought process that is already frenetic. Writer’s block has never been an issue for Houston, who says he finds inspiration in just about everything. He comes up with poems for people who pass by one of his regular perches in the city — he asks for donations — but he also has thousands of others at home that he never intended for anyone but himself.

Walking from the 16th Street Mission BART Station to a bench outside Accident & Artifact on Valencia Street, Houston takes delight in pointing out words of interest he spots on business signs and sidewalks. He files them away in the stockpile in his head, to be tapped when he needs them.

“A poem is made of language,” Houston says. “I don’t know if people know this, but the world is totally covered in language. There is a name for almost everything.”

For seven years Houston, 30, has been making a living from creating typewritten poetry. He has no other job and has become reliant on a dying technology to pay the rent and eat.

“You want poem written … about anything?” he says to people as they walk by. He doesn’t really mean “ about anything,” though. He has his boundaries.

“Official rule. No people! No pets! No feelings! No greeting cards!” he blurts, quicker than a livestock auctioneer. Then he repeats, more slowly for greater emphasis. He offers “math” as a suitable alternative.
Houston feeds off his interactions with those who commission his pieces. A woman who asks him to write about coffee gets a verbal history of the coffee bean while his fingers loudly rap on the green keys.

Afterward he reads the poem — which somehow opens with a line about a jumping goat — in a robotic, breathless tone. Both he and she seem invigorated by the experience.

“It’s an art piece,” Houston says. “I’ve always considered myself to be more of an artist who writes poems than a poet.”
He takes another sip of coffee.