Baby Boom Blues

Part 1: Purple Haze

In the beginning was the weed and the weed was he,

Like a dead fish floating in the middle of the sea,

Blinded by the light, divided by the sight of a burning weed in the dying light.

Dreams were made of nights like these:

Stale tobacco blowing in the breeze,

Beer spills left from the night before,

Giggling faces flowing out the door,

Cigarettes, whisky and wild crazy women

Through the purple haze ever dancing and singing,

Singing sex and drugs and rock and roll --

They kept on dancing so they'd never grow old.

They were dancing shadows against the wall,

Dark shadows in a flashing hall

Where crimson and horizon blue

Pressed against a starker view.

They were pulsing beats that shook the floor

And rattled the windows evermore.

The ceiling ached from their refrain,

Shrieking echoes of a primal brain.

They were disembodied troglodytes,

Walking fish, stromatolites,

Carbonated fire and ice,

Permutations from the roll of the dice.

Part II: Rising Son

Dead dinosaurs fueled their rise

From migrant shores to starry skies.

Children of the Greatest Generation,

Conquering heroes declared,

Democracy a revelation.

Truths, self-evident.

All men created equal.

All stood during the National Anthem.

Everybody watched the Greatest Show on Turf.

The fathers stormed the beaches at Normandy,

Held trials at Nuremberg, championed human rights.

Hanged Nazis from gallows, charged crimes against humanity.

Every son decried melting face insanity.

How could an entire nation simply follow orders,

Drink beer, and eat schnitzel while millions were gassed?

Hello? Is anybody home?

Ding, dong the witch was dead.

Dorothy awoke from her bed in Kansas.

The children joined hands and sang Kumbaya.

Bodies and baby shoe Towers of Babel,

Captured on camera.

The Berlin Wall rose, the DMZ flashed,

Fire hoses blasted protesters, dogs of war released, a Federal Presence unleashed.

Mississippi, burned.

All captured on camera, narrated by Walter Cronkite.

On the nightly news, bridges crossed.

Martyrs chanted:

"Jim Crow must go, Jim Crow must go."

Martyrs, shot in the back,

Shot during parades,

Shot in the back of their heads like Lincoln, watching Julius Caesar,

Assassinated by Boothe who was hanged.

E tú Brutus? The audience gasped.

With malice to none, and charity to all,

Emancipation promised, liberty to all.

Truman dropped atomic bombs twice,

Truman signed the Marshall Plan.

America transformed the globe from Germany to Japan.

Baseball and apple pie,

John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, and Cher

Star Trek and Get Smart, everybody shared.

Everybody knew about the cone of silence.

Mopar mysticism, Mustangs, and Chevy trucks

Across interstates, country roads, and suburban sprawl.

From the Big Sur to West Virginia to Niagara Falls, big blocks, Harleys, and 18 wheelers suddenly came to a crawl.

On the radio Bob Dylan crooned "Everybody must get Stoned."

Why did so many feel so alone?

From Mustang Sally to the British Invasion,

Coca Cola became the taste of a generation.

To teach the world to sing in perfect harmony

Segued to Bye, Bye, American Pie.

From a rising tide to lift all ships,

To Electric Kool-Aid Acid trips. 

From Sputnik to a decade on the rise,

To footprints in the dust of the moon and an American flag planted

Miles and miles across an untamed sea.

On black and white televisions children watched from the couch

While in the mud of the jungle forgotten soldiers crouched.

From the moon, a single blue ball, 

The Earth seemed incredibly small.

With Mutual Assured Destruction, Apocalypse waited,

Kruschev and Kennedy debated

How would the Earth end? In fire or ice?

A King declared, "I have a dream." 

Part 3: Orange Apocalypse

He left a bag of baby carrots

In the kitchen drawer,

Muttering profanities,

Sleepwalking out the door.

Children blankly stared at equations that laid inequalities bare.

Melting icebergs and rising seas,

Legacies of the anthropocene.

Why fractions? Why bother?

Every dollar disappears.

Reading, a mystery for many who can't decode.

Educational torture.

Who really cares?

With nothing to count and nobody to count on.

"I'll take the F" becomes written in stone.

"Some will always be dinosaur food."

Quoth the ancient mariner.

To the Who's of Whoville whom nobody hears,

While about to be boiled in Beezelnut Oil by the Wickersham Brothers,

A Horton with elephant ears, Disney magic?

No heroes?

Abandon all hope, ye who enter here,

Reads the sign above the door.

Nobody answers the knocking at the door.

Hello, anybody home?

"Will nobody dine and sup with me?" the Son inquires?

Children, separated at the border, caged like dogs,

"Build the Wall,'' an orange chorus howls

"Jews will not replace us," the chorus scowls

Bearing tiki torches like crosses, in khakis all.

Part IV: Four Horsemen

Russians came and Russians went, talking of search engines and artificial intelligence.

They came bearing free Kaspersky, installed Trojan Horses with impunity.

 

They paid cash for entire floors in the Tower of Babel using shell corporations.

Paid above Market prices, served black caviar and exotic spices.

They made straw man donations through the NRA,

Paid Evangelicals to look the other way.

They installed cameras in vases, cameras in kitchens, cameras in bedrooms, cameras in the ceiling, hacked into servers, pushed people out of windows.

Putin rode a white horse.

The president rode a golf cart.

Manchin drove his Maserati to a Riverboat mansion

The fourth, he rode a donkey.

Nobody cared.

Ooh la, la, the MAGA nation drawled.

He's incredible, it's inevitable.

He can grab women by the pussy, because when you're a star you can do anything.

Captured on tape.

Nobody can stop a president credibly accused of rape.

When you can shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue, all bend their knee.

Anything's possible with prosperity gospel, Anthony Robbins and neuro linguistic programming.

An AR-15 for every child.

A pardon for paid polluters.

Who needs to read when the Second Coming of Christ is incarnate?

He tosses paper towels to Puerto Ricans to sop up a hurricane?

Hallelujah!

On Twitter, scenes from Wuhan emerge:

Apartment dwellers, welded inside apartment complexes.

Trucks spray aerosols onto streets and sidewalks,

Officials in hazmat suits spray factories while people work.

Captured on tape.

Ships on the West Coast, quarantined.

Scenes from Italian hospitals flood the airwaves.

Fake virus, the president declares.

Nothing to worry about, just the Wu Flu.

Americans die.

Requests for mask mandates, refused by red state governors.

The MAGA chorus calls for Dr. Faucci's head for shutting down businesses and shutting down schools.

Fake news, the president declares, by the spring it will all simply fade away.

Can we shove a light bulb up the ass?

I'm a stable genius, it might work.

I know about such things.

Dr. Birx, wearing colorful scarfs, feigns.

Hydroxychloroquin, and Ivermectin, shilled by OAN, Newsmax, and FOX,

Superspreader events, coordinated on Facebook and FOX.

Nearly a million people die, mostly the old and infirm.

Just an accounting trick Tucker Carlson chirps.

"I alone can fix it," 45 declares.

Part V: Out, Out Brief Candle

Whole cities have burned in flames like these

Cold ashes long scattered by the breeze.

In fading coals crackle memories of

Empires crumbled to dust.

Helen and Paris crossed the sea,

Fled to Troy, hid behind a big, beautiful wall.

Cassandra wailed, her family called her crazy.

She cried, beware Greeks who come bearing gifts.

Nobody listened.

The wall, undefeated.

The war, unrelenting.

Odysseus alone saw possibility.

The wily Greek spread rumors of

Signs from the Gods.

Greek ships sailed over the horizon.

Confirmation.

The rosy fingered dawn arrived,

A wooden horse, glistened with pride.

The Trojans swung the gates wide open

And feasted.

The fathers stormed the beaches at Normandy.

The sons stormed The US Capitol chanting "Hang Mike Pence."

 Part 6: 30 Silver Coins

45, he lashed out, serpentine.

"Indicated" by the New York Attorney General on 30 counts of financial fraud after 30 minutes of testimony by a single witness.

(3+3)+(1+2+3) + (3 + 3) = 666

"The greatest witch hunt," blasted on Truth Social.

A crucifixion.

33% agreed.

MTG, whore of the AR-15 and the NRA , made Civil War her battle cry.