The Gone Old Days

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In those days we’d lounge
(poets, Maoists,
bikers, freaks,
and parapsychologists)
in the Piccadilly Pub
hitting hash
from soapstone pipes
hung on rawhide
cords around necks
that we irrigated
with jars of draft.

One night two wild boys
disguised as hippies
afflicted me
(or confessed to each other)
with a tale of picking bottles
and an old alley rummy bum
they’d beaten to death,
not meaning to do it.