Dedicated with great pleasure to
Stephen E Yocum and Ilion Gray,
Don fans both.*
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Created: Mar 26, 2011 10:56 AM
Written the day after a Don McLean
concert at Town Hall, New York City*
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We stood shoulder to shoulder,
for our voice was soon to arrive,
we were friends of Vincent's friend,
a starry night decorator,
chronicler of our youthful days,
who tonight, returned to us,
harmonizor of memories
of long ago,
one more 'last' time
our bodies we pledged to him,
our allegiance we displayed
via our uniforms,
most of us decorated with badges
of our mutuality,
medals of weary grey,
lives worn, patient sat to hear our
youthful anthems and
dormant dreams,
re-populated in our hearts, live,
alive, resurrected, babes once more
Chevys and levees and then
by God,
we were dancing in the aisles
Like we used to,
one more time,
grassy odors enhanced our
recharged our voices,
we swore fealty to our memories,
said goodbye one last time, again,
to our youth and American Pie
I swear it's true that
this anthem of tribute and attribute
to who we were, makes
tears stream down my cheeks,
a taste mixed, salty
but also, bel canto sweet,
always simultaneously
forty years blink disappear
and I am ****** on
a summer nite in Sixty Nine,
sitting on my porch,
high up in Cleveland Heights,
and "future," was not yet
a ***** word
My red 65 Mustang makes me
a big shot,
I fall in and out love
and/or so many woman's beds,
pillow talk of how we won't be
like our parents cause
we are gonna make over this lousy world
they bequeathed us,
how we're gonna let the Cuyahoga River
burn off fifty years of industrial waste,
the future will be born anew,
the urban orbs,
we will plan and rebirth,
they will be human beautiful
Earned my summer wages in
a Republic steel warehouse
where this college kid
who then was car-less in Cleveland,
a sin, hippie bicycled to work where
he was mocked & crowned
on his hard hat,
"The Macaroni Kid" -
he had foolishly revealed
to his ha ha,
Fellow American Co-Workers
his student budget dietary staple
but when in he was deep in the belly
of the railroad cars
where they lowered him
to chain together
the custom shaped steel rods,
on their way to be
the skeleton bones for the concrete blocks
to build the Jane Jacob's
neighborhood-killing bland apartment buildings,
that we both so despised,
building blocks of the
USA's cities of anomie
In the railroad cars, this kid
sang Don's songs softly
to himself and was happy
Lamenting the loss of our
carriers of hope to the
trajectory of assassin's bullets,
I cut my hair, shaved my beard,
for the music had indeed died.
Returned to the NYC in '72,
lived on Bleecker Street,
scrounged the streets
of the Village by nite,
a seeker of urban truths,
loose women, and junk "wood"
to burn in the fireplace of
my third floor walkup
working daytime office jobs,
at night, we drank new drinks of
tunes of english imports
and unbelievably, later on, disco
but we never forgot a single word
of our Bye Bye song,
ode to our wonder years
So on a March chill night, 2011,
the now all grown ups
were petitioned to come,
meet at Town Hall,
on the agenda,
a motion of recall
to bid one last
fare thee well
to the glory days before
we crossed the line from
rebels to voting citizens,
from spirited rock n rollers
to grumbling taxpayers,
from kids to parents
So I weep and smile and
do so for all of us
for I will go out
booming, singing, way too loud,
no decorum for this adult,
bid adieu to our best days,
one more good old boy,
now just a good old man
drinking whiskey and rye
smiling, crying, all mixed up,
sad, happy, touched inside
one last time, by the lyrics,
you know 'em well from
from so long ago,
so long, Bye Bye,
My American Pie
