Monday, April 3, 2017

Rob Schackne #288 - Born In The '50s

Born in the '50's
                     

               (after Kerri Shying)

Born in the '50s
and now in my 60s
child of a more affluent age
of parents of the big war
grandparents of the prohibition
and the depression
they all drank like fish
and smoked up a storm
(who were lucky and who died)
then in the '60s

times were a-changin'
for honesty
we thought
useless work was inimical

devote it differently
the world might be a better place
some fought hard against
what the world had become
we were confident children
educated within an inch of our lives
chosen to know what we should protest

we lied we cheated we dodged the draft
(they were extraordinary times)
so we rolled our eyes
and we fixed our little joints
and we smoked like fish
only to learn later
the workers couldn't mobilise

there was no counter-culture
the tribes would not unite
or as some suspected
war was an inseparable disease
the paranoia was justifiable
wearing Levi's® wasn't democratic
and then as now quite hard
to get people off their asses


8 comments:


  1. It's just my story or part of it,
    I'm sure everyone's got one.

    ReplyDelete
  2. So true, and yet we hoped, and marched, and marched again.

    ReplyDelete
  3. and now those jeans are torn to shreds
    before they're even worn

    but only to tell how rich I am

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. gruesome music to go
      with the gruesome jeans
      chained to a tree

      Delete

  4. Not thrown out
    just backburned
    idealism still visits
    on a rainy day

    ReplyDelete
  5. They were extraordinary times - the lying, cheating, dodging the draft, protesting, Bob Dylan, the joints etc etc ... but it's great to see that much more than remnants of them survive - and I'm not just talking about the poets (!!!) - but also some of the idealism and social justice stuff - I see with my students who are in their 20s!

    ReplyDelete

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