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.

There is a storm
That is turning hearts into story tellers
And Wise elders chanting an ode to sadness
Hoping its fists could claw a way out
Of their sullen eyes and stretch just far enough
To polish the clouded thoughts of quiescent beings

A storm of gray splatters on otherwise perfectly blue skies
Filled with reflections of first school days, and Makeshift street stadiums
A storm of children turned into ghosts
Haunting the mausoleums that these streets have become
As the gray splatters slowly turned into ****** ones
And the trust of men was put into guns
Instead of other humans
As though cold lifeless metal
Could compete with a beating heart
As though men who happen to be white
Are most appropriate to decide who wins the battle
No body wins the battle, No body wins in war
There are only rubbles, and catacombs
For the comfortable ones, who convinced themselves
That they were bestowing favors on the dying


Fleeing death is apparently not a good enough reason
To be deserving of a land that was never even ours
And mourning little boys found on shores
is only good until the hashtag is out of season

so you tell me, does sadness reside in the pity
of a heart seeking reassurance of its goodness
or does it surrender when it meets the resilience
of children who made their roofs out of starry nights

The Head is dead
Not much to be said.
We jump and wave,
Jump and wave.

The Head is dead
No tears be shed.
We jump and wave,
Jump and wave.

My only love disposed of by
your mindless hate.
Now.. If the Head be dead..
No mo' fear led.
We jump and wave,
Jump and wave.

Like when ****** dead
We rest easy in our beds,
Then jump and wave,
Jump and wave.

My life before my eyes saw you
Was dark and empty and like a dying coal
My heart was hard and burdened with rue
My blood was cold from my dying soul
I had my things and friends 'tis true
But the happiness from stuff grows old
From whence happiness came I never knew
The only thing I felt was the creeping cold
Joy seemed to me as like a bird, in it came and out it flew
"Things always get better" I was told
But it seemed that to happiness was an everlasting queue
Some said to take a risk and risk being bold
Was all it took, as well as risking my life too
But I cringed and tried to hide in gold
Surely happiness From wealth was due?
Then I felt myself squeezed into a mould
And that was when my eyes saw you.