Dipping Beer Bottles (1967) Confessional Poetry

7—Dipping Beer Bottles (1967)

My neighborhood buddies came aroundfor a couple of beers and wine, a placeto drink, and hide from the cops, often

that long summer, in ‘67. I rented a garage overlooking railroad tracks on Acker Street,
about $15-dollars a week (it was a pit),

and the gang came, practiced their drinkingagainst one another, sister and brother: the
silent swollen bottles, drained end to end.

We bathed, immersed ourselves that summer,
with wine, beer and females to no score,
we played an unfaultable game…
drinking contests against one another, at nightwe all became good at it, unseeingly drunk
falling, sick as skunks… in my little garage.

Then one night, Sword came with his friendsbroke an aquarium, raped a girlfriend, shadowless;then unimaginative, the police came.

They couldn’t find him, a gang rape they saidand when they did, he went to prison,between the iron bars, he was now living.

To California Sid fled, and Reno, was
questioned by the police, he’s now dead,
and me, I paced back and forth—wondering.


#1708 2-27-2007 Mr. Siluk lived in a neighborhood called Cayuga Street or as the police called it, back in the '60s, "Donkeyland", and this was one of the many happenings that took place.