A Writing on the Net SM
Click here for home page

For Madmen Only
By Nathaniel Goldberg
Copyright 2000 Nathaniel Goldberg
A poem about the writer being with beatnik poets in Greenwich Village.
 
Peter waist length
hair coiffed and perfumed
headed crosstown from
the East Village towards
Gurdy's Folk City where Allen
read poetry.
I never went in
the sign read
"Allen Ginsberg."
reminded me of the one over the
door in Steppenwolfe:
"For Madmen Only."
I was hungry so I stopped
in Nedicks for
orange juice and a hamburger
We used to meet there in the old
days when Marguerite Young was
our professor at The New School
After class, pursued by her students
she'd walk towards Sixth Avenue
We'd stay past midnight
She was a night owl the
way I am these days.
Nedicks was my second home
I didn't have
much money. I lived in a
hovel on St. Marks Place for 55 a month
across from the Dom where
the famous met drank Pernod.
There was
a little cafe on Second Avenue
around the corner where poets read
under candle light.
All the Beatniks,
a few winos
and
me.