Beatniks got hip until hippies got beat
by their own rock’n’roll and by riot cops
as they made love and war in field and street:
spoiled rebel children, psychedelic flops
who thought their youth made them immune
to lies from gods that pipe that tune.

Beatniks leaned first toward hip existential,
breaking out of the fifties mental mold.
Culture’s Petri dish turned pestilential;
drugs, deviance and rebellion: dull as old.
Yet novel did it ever seem
to souls exploited for their dream.

The Hippies took that bongo tea-house scene;
added acid’s naked technicolor:
freak-outs, love-ins, the normalized obscene;
politics of outrage, now made duller.
Impulsivity their passion.
(Sin is never out of fashion.)

Youth’s dissident victory incomplete
they glimpsed on flowery fields of battle
kaleidoscopic visions of defeat:
the psychedelic baby’s death-rattle.
Allen Ginsberg’s perverted freak.
Now reached its Himalayan peak.

Trace back in time this cultural malaise;
the poisoned sources where doubt first enticed.
In retrospect we diagnose their ways:
anti-God, anti-family, anti-Christ.
Oh no, you say; that was just youth—
we had to follow our own truth.

What did we learn in your San Fran cafés
poetically dense in plume-clouds of smoke?
That arty nihilism’s just a phase
and transgression of morals a tired joke.
(The Man will always make a buck
off fools who live to smoke and ****.)

That mystic idols are not Truth . . .
blown minds will never save a soul;
Faith and Wisdom, both alien to youth,
in child’s-play, play a minor role.

That beats burn out and hippies age;
we’re no wiser for their excess.
Unwashed ravings, Bohemian rage
contain no truths—much less, success.

What did they teach us while tripping and ****** ?
Could it nourish at all, their cosmic brew—
their cult of youth, their dying gods bemoaned,
their howls, their road trips, their breakings on through?

Only this, Daddy-O — now dig my writ;
my be-boppin’ speed rant, my acid rock:
that drug-addled rebels who scrawl half-lit
fumble with a key that cannot unlock.

Dial-A-Party USA!
What more do I need to say?
One person shows at your place alone
And after they use your telephone
It happens quicker than you can say.
“Dial-A-Party USA!”

You get a household full
Of old and new friends
Who stick around with you
Until the party ends.
Night and day, the happy throng
Will sing and dance and shout.
Until you’ve had enough of all that
And stand up and throw them out.

Dial-A-Party USA!
It can happen any day.
All it takes is for you to be home
So, if you don’t want this, GO ROAM!
Go see a movie, and stay away
From Dial-A-Party USA!

But if you think it’s great fun
To welcome and feed everyone;
All they drink and eat and smoke
They’ll tell everybody you’re great fun.
They’re extremely dependable, but
If you have any desire to miss it
And enjoy a peaceful time at home
Keep that plan a deep dark secret!

Dial-A-Party USA!
What more do I need to say?
One person shows at your place alone
And after they use your telephone
It happens quicker than you can say.
“Dial-A-Party USA!”

Plastic hippies and flashy Hollywood ******;
These were my neighbors and much much more.
The memorable characters on my famous street
Didn’t always have money or shoes on their feet.

I was the person meant to grow up
Finding these neighbors disgusting.
That was before all the questions I had
Of the vengeful God I was trusting.

But, I came to know that people
Must be more than what Sunday
And all the  hypocritical singing
Would claim them to be someday.

So I started learning what people
Do when they act and walk
Then tried to match those actions up
With how people behave and talk.

Plastic hippies and flashy Hollywood ******;
These were my neighbors and much much more.
The memorable characters on my famous street
Didn’t always have money or shoes on their feet.

Let The plastic hippies pretend
How mellow and tolerant they are
In their designer Levi cutoff shorts
And their carefully chosen used cars.

And expensive ****** and slinky pimps
Turn out to be much the same thing
They do what they do, get what they get
And all of it to please some great king.

Is that any different than praying in church
To invisible God they don't know?
Sneer if you wish and call it a sin
But I don't think that's how it should go.

Plastic hippies and flashy Hollywood ******;
These were my neighbors and much much more.
The memorable characters on my famous street
Didn’t always have money or shoes on their feet.

Turn on.* He preached,
A psychodelic mantra.

Turn off, I rejoin.
Recharge your battery.
Hear the place.
Don't skip out.

Tune in,
That's what he proclaimed,
Like a hallelujah chorus.

Tune out, I respond.
Extract the buds, and smell the flowers.

Drop out, his litany ended.
Alone, or with drop outs?
Distances and depths vary.
But his voice carried.

Drop by, I invite. Stay awhile.
Have a cup of Yorkshire Gold,
And walk in the garden,
With me.

So a person is gay, so they have to "have their way"
With a simple ring,  pizza or cake, a legal wedding day,
Doing things that straight people do everyday.
So a person is black, so they have to "vandalize,"
Even if in a decent non-violence as they demonstrate.
Remove the "threat," gang up on them even if
"Black Lives Matter" is all they were there to say.
So a person is an anti-war hippie, don't listen to them,
Instead go to war EVERY time and "make the world
A better place," especially for our children!
So a person is eccentric, "a dreamer," they have no right-of-way,
You're in this so-called free country,
Leave all of your dreams, your goals, your hopes
At home or take them to another MORE LIBERAL
Country to stay.

“one day i will find the right words, and they will be simple.” - jack kerouac

pancakes on a sunday morning, jack daniel’s, getting really drunk then running naked through the forest,  mosh pits, double rainbows, old trucks, freebandz, panic attacks, overflowing bubble baths, woodstock 1969, lemonade, slamming my head into wet pavement, the cranberries, jumping into someone’s arms after having gone years without seeing them, american spirits, crying, heavy metal music, innocence, laughing until a hospital visit is necessary, ragers, smiles on the faces of five year old children after stripping the shelves of a candy store bare, severe depression, the 90s, basketball hoops in driveways, putting on makeup at 1 AM, the mojave desert, life.

-z. vega

There are people somewhere
Almost no one knows about
There are girls and women boys and men
Gone beyond the places people care about
And, no one ever sees them again.
They laugh and love and work and share their daily bread
And, live within the fruits of the soil
Smiling at the treasures only found
In the efforts of the ones who toil.

And nobody sings their anthem
Nobody paves their way;
Trees and rocks are neighbors for
The ones who went away.
The ones who went away,
Oh, oh, oh, oh.
The ones who went away.

Somewhere smoke is curling from a handmade home
Someone sits adrift in a song
Tapping toes to rhythms of a timeless beat
And sometimes laughing loud and strong.
Someone no one knows about will sleep tonight
Content with what was done today.
Smiling with a face that seems to say
They wouldn’t have it any other way.

And nobody sings their anthem
Nobody paves their way;
Trees and rocks are neighbors for
The ones who went away.
The ones who went away,
Oh, oh, oh, oh.
The ones who went away.

Bell bottom hip huggers
And my Frankenstein shoes
That had stack soles and heels
That I could only barely use.
A crop-top sleeveless tee shirt
With a superman emblem on it
And diamond ring on my hand.
In case I might have to pawn it.

Because we were picketing
Downtown at the City Hall
And at some police stations.
It was the seventies after all.
Our parents raised us to acquiesce
It was their America they protected.
And it was just exactly this blindness
That we, en masse, all rejected.

We failed to understand them
The generations that came before
That prized prejudice and bias
And celebrated sending us to war.
We felt there was another way
To go about sweeping social change.
We saw beating and fire hosing
As nefarious and more than strange.

We got beaten ourselves and jailed
For just pointing injustice out to them
And watched our sit-ins and love-ins
Turned into scenes of ****** mayhem.
We heard them call us all criminals,
Long haired ******* was a favored taunt.
It seems we were entitled to our opinions
As long as we didn’t chose to flaunt.

It felt so very much like **** Germany
Including storm troopers and jack boots
And the local politicians were obviously
At least agreeing if not in cahoots
With the police in their fear of rebellion
And protecting their good paying jobs.
So, they beat us and vilified the students
Calling them ***** communists, and slobs.

And, yes, some of us were getting high
Back in our homes and apartments.
Sometimes it seemed the only way
We could deal with the estrangement
Between what our country said it was
And what it turned out it really was.
It was hard to realize our land wasn’t free
And there was no social Santa Claus.