Bohemian Threnody

Back then we could eat clouds - we were that tall, even baggy Ben (who was small for a lumpy kid), could leap over a pub door without leaving the floor. Then behind our backs a Lilliputian world crept up, it was mouse-grey, and it nibbled ferociously. I went to the South Coast to roustabout; then the lot of them chose to join the heavy brigade; they got real jobs not the casual hourly sideshow work bohemians favored. After spinning my head for a shilling I returned, but by then the whole decade had dispersed like moths in a rainstorm. I renewed an acquaintance or two with former females, those who had been set aside on shelves for later. There was no longer any power in flowers drum circles lost their nativist beat. Of course we all sold out, I was just a late bloomer. Now in my mature and preserved fruitiness I spurn the hallucinogenic and am as pious as any defrocked magpie that drips memories by moonlight, grudgingly bemoaning the sag of this slow jowly age.