Sunday, September 22, 2013

Paleo-Hippies


Lawrence Hall

P. O. Box 856

1286 County Road 400

Kirbyville, Texas 75956

Mhall46184@aol.com

Paleo-Hippies

 

Having withdrawn from the existential struggle,

Surrendering their arms and protest signs,

They muster in Denny’s for the Senior Special

Uniformed in knee-pants and baseball caps

And Chinese tees that read “World’s Greatest Grandpa,”

Hearing aids and trifocs at parade rest,

And quadrupedal aluminum sticks

Raging against the oxygen machine.

Not trusting anyone over ninety,

They rattle their coffee cups and dentures

Instead of suspicious Nixonians,

And demand pensions, not revolution.

They mourn classmates dead, not The Grateful Dead.

They do not burn their Medicare cards

Tho’ once they illuminated the world

With their flaming conscription notices.

They no longer read McKuen or Tolkien

Or groove to the Mamas and the Papas;

Their beads and flowers are forever filed

In books of antique curiosities

Beside a butterfly collection shelved

In an adjunct of the Smithsonian

Where manifestos go to be eaten

By busy mice and slow-pulsing fungi.

As darkness falls they make the Wheel, not peace -

They did not change the world, not at all, but

The world changed anyway, and without them,

And in the end they love neither Jesus

Nor Siddhartha, but only cable t.v.

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