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Allen Ginsburg writes of a walk gone bad in his 1974
Mugging.
Tonite I walked out of my red apartment door on East tenth
streets dusk
Walked out of my home ten years, walked out in my honking
neighborhood
Tonite at seven walked out past garbage cans chained to concrete
anchors
Walked under black painted fire escapes, giant castiron plate
covering a hole in ground
--Crossed the street, traffic lite red, thirteen bus roaring
by liquor store,
past corner pharmacy iron grated, past Coca Cola & Mylai
posters fading scraped on brick
Past Chinese Laundry wood doord, & broken cement
stoop steps
For Rent hall painted green& purple Puerto Rican style
Along E. 10ths glass spattered pavement, kid blacks
& Spanish oiled hair adolescents crowded house fronts
Ah, tonite I walked out on my block NY City under humid summer
sky Halloween,
thinking what happened Timothy Leary joining brain police
for a season?
thinking whats all this Weathermen, secrecy & selrighteousness
Beyond reason F.B.I. plots?
Walked past a taxicab controlling the bottle strewn curb
Past young fellows with their umbrella handles & canes
leaning against a ravaged Buick
--and as I looked at the crowd of kids on the stoopa
boy stepped up, put his arm around my neck
tenderly I thought for a moment, squeezed harder, his umbrella
handle against my skull,
and his friends took my arm, a young brown companion tripped
his foot gainst my ankle
as I went down shouting Om Ah Hum to gangs of lovers on the
stoop watching
slowly appreciating, why this is a raid, these strangers mean
strange business
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