Saturday, October 24, 2015

The Sixties, Again -- a poem

The Sixties, Again

There was an anger and an innocence, then,
served up buffet-style on the radio
and on the back of album sleeves and the pages
of underground magazines and newspapers.

We feasted, you and I, never caring
that it might be too much, that tomorrow
will throw regrets at such easy targets.
Let the cynics come; they always do

and one decade follows another. Maybe I
saw it before you, in the shadows we cast.
The fading reverb of Dick Dale's Strat
haunted those years, forgotten but felt,

echoed in our heart beat, in every wave
that broke and ran back to the sea,
in every trip to those far misted shores.
They beckoned us, they did, and we followed

our white rabbits while we could and our youth
disappeared down one hole or another. Across
each song I have sought it, through
cartoon pop and slick pseudo-psychedelia.

Again, the Sixties — no one saw them leave
but I knew they were gone. They became lost
in the jungle gunfire, to be identified
by their dog-tags, identified as the children

who danced the surfer-stomp when night was still
a friend. Pointless is as pointless does;
we both know it never mattered. Yes, the music
was good but it never mattered at all.

Stephen Brooke ©2015

a little longer and a little more free-form than is my wont

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