by Ed Sanders

Some Glyphs from The History of Peace Eye
     This selection of nine comes from a 221–glyph manuscript,
          “History of Peace Eye.”

Hymn to the Lower East Side
in the 1960s

Hail to Miriam Sanders and Deborah Beckham
in Tompkins Square Park in the summer

Come Alive Come Alive
in the Olive Trees of Time
o splashing children
in the Tompkins Park fountains of 1966!

Hail to the Rent Controls in NYC
which didn’t happen by accident!

There was a ceaseless effort in  the Depression ’30s
to organize on the issue of evictions & fair rents

A city-wide tenants council in NYC was formed in 1936
It worked and worked
and helped pass a “limited” rent-control law in ’39

During WWII a group called the United Tenants League formed
whose work helped lead to the Office of Price Administration
which set up wartime rent controls in NYC

(which stayed in place fro decades after
the war
and helped make possible the

by Ed Sanders

Some Glyphs from The History of Peace Eye
     This selection of nine comes from a 221–glyph manuscript,
          “History of Peace Eye.”

early April, 1969

I left the Peace Eye Bookstore one early evening
and walked up Avenue A to our apartment
an old dental office with a marble fireplace
at 12th street

I unlocked the door
and then I was rushed from behind
by 2 guys who tossed me to the floor
and one of them pushed a knife
against my throat
chanting, “Where’s the amphetamine,
Where’s the amphetamine?”

I told them I never used amphetamine,
much less sold it
and I swore to God
I wasn’t the one who’d burned them.

Finally, the one in the blue trenchcoat said,
“Hey man, the guy that burned us didn’t have
no red boots on.”

And so my stylish red rock and roll boots
may have saved my life