Reply #10: "Tears from a Hippie Soul" [View All]

[Pathwalker]

I wrote this poem in 1987, the year my dear brother committed suicide.



TEARS FROM A HIPPIE SOUL
(for Loy)
by
Anj


We grew up on free love and the Vietnam War,
freedom marches and acid drops in hippie attire;
a generation all asking what life is for
if it ends in jungles echoing: Ready, Aim, Fire!

We expected the rose-colored future disney promised,
but we got Timothy Leary, two dean Kennedys, a slain King,
war with a president none of us were willing to trust
and ended up losing the reason for the whole damn thing.

Fifty thousand young men died on that distant shore,
twenty(*)years later there's a far worse disgrace on our soul;
SIXTY thousand vets have since ended their lives - how many more
will do the same before Vietnam extracts its final toll?

A million hippies fade now into tie-dyed, madras memories,
working toward the social Security pension that won't be there,
trying to grab hold of the future before it flees,
hoping it will justify, verify the reasons we still care...

"We, the People of the United States,
in order to form a more perfect union,
establish justice, insure domestic tranqulity,
provide for the common defence..."

* That was in 1987