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icebox
Member Elite
since 2003-05-03
Posts 4383
in the shadows

0 posted 2020-06-07 03:53 PM





We used to wear flowers in our hair
and listen to Dylan and the Doors,
and the Stones,
and smoke a lot;
the world,
it seemed,
could be done over
in paisley and peace,
it was the peace that comes
from being numb,
but we were young
we were young.

War back then was just another reason
to get high
and mighty,
to walk around
with mushroom soup for brains,
sticking flowers in the guns,
running naked through Chicago,
sticking truth in their ears,
telling ourselves we really did
levitate the Pentagon.

Until a trench coat man
with promises and money, lots of money,
said all I had to do was all I had to do
for all the money I could make,
it didn't take a genius to figure out a plan;
what did it matter where the killings were
as long as all the killings were
for God and country's sake;
Hell
it was only time and money after all,
it was only time and money after all.

It helped me to believe we'd beat Him,
by dealing death we'd cheat Him,
scam the Reaper live forever,
not just in our deeds
but forever young,
like an awakened sleeper,
to rage somehow some day against
the Johnsons-McNamaras-Nixons-Daleys,
Buffet and the rest of all the check book patriots;
well
we were just
the best we'd ever seen,
the best we'd ever seen.

The last time I was in the Haight
street walkers with psychedelic cell phones
wore paisley granny dresses
so salesmen from Des Moines,
and Akron,
could go home to tell their buddies
in the club
how they had screwed a hippie,
in the Haight;
back when war was deadly
we thought free love was safe;
how times have changed,
how times have changed.

Too young to remember TIME and LIFE?
Before anthrax, god's own freaks, missing nukes,
earth killing asteroid streaks?
Money that evaporates,
religions always based on love
teaching us our private hates?
Internet pornography, YouTube,
cell phones and Twitter geeks,
HIV or H1N1
COVID just a bad odds bet
a Chinese trick,
or a simple twist in history?
Want to choose a boogeyman,
a virus or a meteor,
bad vaccines or toxic beef steaks,
global warming, global cooling,
is our President a sneak?
Who are the terroristas this week?

Every news bite a crisis,
lies
just a way to speak
by idiots
trying to spend us out of debt?
Remember when spin was what our tires did
not politicians and CNN?

Now we elect politicians who prove every day they aren't bright,
trying to convince us Socialism is just Democracy Lite.

They used to warn us
to the bone
about the evil of the life and times
in which we always seemed to feel at home;
now we are them,
now we are them.

White papers and documentaries
were strident warnings everywhere,
about hippie acid in reservoirs
how we had to watch the water
to protect the body politic,
about powders that we buried in our genes,
how drugs and sex and rock 'n roll would rot our brains,
when we should be getting high on life;

that's what we'd read in any news source
whenever we were straight enough
to read about their hate.
It wasn't often we were straight.

They must have been right
about those drugs building up
inside us all distorting our reality,
so we ignore what's there to see;
it must be
why wide-eyed panic hides naively
behind a breathing mask,
why terrorists who were released
on presidential pardons flew back
becoming ashes in rain that dried
to powder on windowsills looking out
on deadly gardens,
why I don't drink the water anymore,
why sunsets get redder every day.

The cities now,
they say,
may have to be abandoned;
the cities
may have to be abandoned.

©2003, 2009, 2015, 2019, 2020 by icebox







© Copyright 2020 icebox - All Rights Reserved
Paul Wilson
Deputy Moderator 1 TourDeputy Moderator 1 Tour
Member Elite
since 2002-07-07
Posts 4711
United States
1 posted 2020-06-07 08:12 PM


Icebox...Really enyoyed the irony in this. The past ain't half bad compared to the present and an unknown tomorrow...Paul

~~To share my poems with you is to share my heart with you~~
Paul

Temptress
Moderator
Member Rara Avis
since 1999-06-15
Posts 7136
Mobile, AL
2 posted 2020-06-07 09:36 PM


State of the Union...State of the world. It seems a lot more excessive every day and every year. There are too many blind sheep I think.  I'd give anything to actually believe peace is attainable.  

Thanks for causing me to think even if I probably don't know what I'm talking about.  This would make a great song.


"Maybe that's the way I should go
Straight into the mouth of the unknown"

Shinedown

Marchmadness
Member Rara Avis
since 2007-09-16
Posts 9271
So. El Monte, California
3 posted 2020-06-28 12:28 PM


Yes, this has been the reality of our life's journey this time. I have to smile when I think of how nieve I once was.

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