MUSIC IS DEAD-

Once a time there were Poet's who ryhmed
With guitar, voice, piano, drum, being as one
In song.

MUSIC IS DEAD-

Monterey pop festival, Woodstock, Newport pop festival,
Altamont, the list goes on.

MUSIC IS DEAD-

No more does music have meaning, protestors protested for reason's, now protesting what the administration sais is truth
While yet middle easterns, and our own citizens are seething.

MUSIC IS DEAD-

Lyrics that once changed the earth, now are a church, of fashion idols, teenie boppers, pinning bad against good, turning good Into to bad, cash makes younger ones happy, older musicians die off by the bags. Lady gaga speaks of materialism, with the kids, listens with it mom and dad, societies failure.

MUSIC IS DEAD-

Once something sacred, sacrosanct, has turned to global banks, making stage sets such as save the planet ( while many destroy it)

MUSIC IS DEAD-

Don't let it get in your head, you are still being fed, what the sixties spoke of CONTROL.

Don't sell your soul.

Music is dead.

There was a time when the world seemed
an easy spoil of conquests
within reach-and we were young and blinded,
sure of our steps in every wrong direction.
We were free and unspoilt, unchristened
in the many facts and figures that took us
down a long road to destiny.

Who cared about the roofless sky
the waters rage, the waterfalls incessant spill
and magnificent spray that baptised us
in wonder. Who cared about the drumbeats
at the dead of night
and nightmares that gripped the soul
in its tangled knots. We were Woodstock
and Glastonbury, full of Vietnam wars
and journeys to the Moon and Nixon and
FlowerPower. We were filled with everybody
else but ourselves. We were free
from the chains of society.

And then the cells closed in, the ranks faltered
Moguls took over the stockmarkets
and the jobs were dismantled and monopolised
the riches were ransacked and the free love potions
that came with cannabis and upside down waterfalls
bleeding chairs and rock music
beads and baubles and denim fantasies
became tagged with slave labour and oil spills
and mountains of rubble stored in giant cities
of concrete boxes. All the worlds cities were locked
in invisible borders that shot people down with laser beams
and synthetic drugs and coloured t shirts.
We were locked back into our freedom cubbyholes
that were now governed by empty heads with dark glasses
and steel rimmed belts that zapped you into line.

Four decades of smouldering in the rubble left us
limbless and mindless
technology does our work now
and our brains are frozen and hacked with strange numbers
of which we know little. We cannot love again freely.

The remnants of those decades still linger
on the borders of the soul where butterflies
once flew and songs were belted out one after the other
into giant stadiums where  people danced with bare skins
coated with mud and magic. The pink stripes never really
vanished, but our bodies still alert to joyous music
that the whole world clapped and rattled to. Gone.

Our world was taken from us
and the poor ******* that now stretch down the clogged
highways of the mind and roadways of
consumption without work will never understand
how we lived and learned and laughed
in that free open world.

Author Notes

Nostalgia. Thousands will agree to what I write of a time gone by. We  are now trapped in a sterile world where automation and technology have overtaken our will to be ourselves once again. Soon we will be gone into that other world where freedom exists again.
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved.

The fragrance of a rose can change the direction of history
and if you do not recognise the unique power of a flower
look back to Woodstock, and listen to Jimmy Hendricks
playing "All Along The Watchtower " wearing his flowered shirt.

(10/13/12)

At the beginning of “64” - I packed up my uniform
And walked out the door- it was the beginning of
The Vietnam war.
By August of that same year
President  Johnson started the draft
Under protests and jeers.

Then he made it a full scale war
And sent our soldiers to Vietnam shores.
The Beatniks in Greenwich village
With their long hair, beards, and
Flip flop sandals - wrote their poetry
About this undeclared war, and why
Our men were going to those shores.

This created a new generation called ‘HIPPIES”
The hippie generation was groups of protesters
Against everything that they found wrong
The draft , the war , pollution
And loved to stay high with ***, hashish
Coke and acid (lsd) which kept them blasted.

This also created the “ flower children”
Who like the hippies loved to be high
And on certain flowers they would fly.
But they spoke of loving one another
And gave out flowers as a sign of peace
Which to the president was a relief.

They all started painting this “53 Chevy impala”
With the words “ flower power”.
Now the “ flower children and hippie movement
Was in full swing, and everyone was doing their own thing.

They had  Greenwich village under their control
And not one coffee shop would ever be sold.
Every coffee shop had a poetry night
And going there was such a delight.

Then in AUGUST of “69”
The WOODSTOCK festival was on the rise
Over half a million people drove to that farmland
And set up tents , hammocks, sleeping bags and such
And the police found it was much to much
So they had no choice but to see it through
Because there was nothing else that they could do.

The WOODSTOCK  festival had become world wide
And to this day it still thrives.

© L . RAMS

I was unborn
when the psychodelic bus
left the station,
but I was told about the trip,
the wild flowers
& mystic smoke,
the electric music
that blew minds
& glass tubes.
I heard it was groovy,
that it moved hippie-souls
into a positive-karmic state,
a place I wished
we had stayed.

The chaos of the world has drown me.
My hopes.
My values.
My dreams.
And I can only ponder the thought of what could have been.
What I could of been.
The blanket of night brings back the illustrations of my past.
Who I was.
Why did I hate her so much?

Now I envy to be her.

Perhaps the world is a weird place
Full of weird humans with different hobbies
A place where people feel different emotions
Not everybody's emotions are the same
Some have depression, some have ADHD
I have Bipolar Depression
It's rough sometimes, but I get through it
The weird world that we live in is a magnificent place