83 BY PETER NOLAN SMITH
You peple, you know who you are Ersatz poets,neo-anti heroes Micmicking serpents and lizards With your black leater skin. Importnat that's how you feel Making the scene in your bars CBGBs, Max's and any dive with $1 beers. Your fans enjoy your standing against the bar They jerk off your ego. They fistfuck your Id and they love pissing on your super-ego. Freud knew you like it that way He had no idea about all the rest.
Your nights possess neither intelligence, courage, nor heart According to the 'Silent Majority'. We are smarter than to vacation at malls Braver having left your towns without any light at night. We are staying here until here is not here any longer.
This East Village is not for forever. The streets have seen Jazz, Beats, Hippies, Glitter The sidewalks crowded with the 'Us' of now and then. Our shadows covered the pavement.
The tide will ebb
When will be not soon but not long too. We dregs, we blights, we unwanted will be washed away By the rising waters of the economy And pulled from our lives to live as the 'not us'
Except as memories And rotting leathers in the closet Black jeans the color of coal All to say we stood here once.
FOTO BY EDWARD GRAZDA 1970S
Most of those people are dead or exiled from the city by choice.
A few of us wander the streets. I see them from time to time at museum or gallery openings, dinners, and rarely at bars. We keep to ourselves, although we are often asked by young people about that Era of Errors. A few years ago I attended the Mudd Club reunion. Scores of old punks and New Wavers shambled unsteadily through the crowd in search of a long-lost face. Enrico from Springfield Mass was holding some blow. I inhaled a rail and he arranged an interview with my hillbilly ex-girlfriend Alice, Michael Holman of Grey, and myself. The filmmaker asked, "Did you think those times were special?"
I was surprised to heasr them both said the late-70s and early-80s were the same as now and swifuly interjected, "Not special? I agree that the city was dirty and broke and dangerous, but it was out city and it didn't belong to the bankers, investors, and police likenowadays. We were free and that's why we came to places like the Mudd Club, Tier 3, the Club 82. To be us and I'll always be grateful for those years. They weren't the best of times, but they were far from them.
Later I apologized to Alice for all my wrongs.
"That was a long time ago." She was a TV actress and I was working at a metal shop.
"Yes, a long time ago."
Reading these journals a long time ago is almost today.
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