The Pub

The irony of a poem I wrote called "The Pub" is that I was tripping on LSD when I wrote it in my junior year of college. I swallowed quite a bit of acid and other pills in the late 60's and early 70's, but it was eventually alcohol that swallowed me. I include just one small segment here:

“The Pub”

In its tables waxed and burnt with cigarette marks, in its peanut shells and its glasses, endless piles of glasses, in its cold-eyed stares and the smell of stale beer, in its wine, in its whisky and in its smell of people cramped into a crowd of loneliness, I see life struggling to come to terms with itself.

In the laughter and the sadness of the pub and in the people’s faces I see a dizzy happiness reeling away and toppling over in the morning and I see the hope that morning will not come and I see the fear that each man’s suffering will be felt and I see that the suffering is felt but cannot be reckoned with....
And I see that I drink my beer in silence and however occasional smiles.

from All Drinking Aside (Rough Draft, Day 10)