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BOOKSHELF
A Walker’s City
28 Apr 2003

Allen Ginsburg writes of a walk gone bad in his 1974 “Mugging.”

Tonite I walked out of my red apartment door on East tenth street’s 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 door’d, & broken cement stoop steps
For Rent hall painted green& purple Puerto Rican style
Along E. 10th’s 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 what’s 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 stoop—a 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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