From a Dead Beat to an Old Greaser

From a dead beat to an old greaser, here’s thinking of you.
You won’t remember the long nights;
coffee bars; black tights and white thighs
in shop windows where blonde assistants fully-fashioned a world made
of dummies (with no mummies or daddies to reject them).
When bombs were banned every Sunday and the Shadows played F.B.I.
And tired young sax-players sold their instruments of torture
sat in the station, sharing wet dreams of Charlie Parker,
Jack Kerouac, René Magritte, to name a few of the heroes
who were too wise for their own good left the young brood to
go on living without them.

Old queers with young faces who remember your name,
though you’re a dead beat with tired feet;
two ends that don’t meet.
To a dead beat from an old greaser.
Think you must have me all wrong.
I didn’t care, friend. I wasn’t there, friend,
If it’s the price of pint that you need, ask me again.