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Boomer’s Lament

Lynn Hughes

We watched it all on our living room TV.
Our President shot dead in the motorcade,
Neil Armstrong stepping onto the moon
with his “giant leap for mankind”,
Martin Luther King murdered for preaching
about peace, equality, and brotherhood,
Elvis swiveling his pelvis
and the Beatles shaking their shaggy hair at the girls.
We burned our bras and threw out our shoes,
wore hip-hugging pants, tie dyes, beads and long hair.
Mary Jane was our friend, we made love under the Stars and Stripes.
we smoked and drank wine and stayed up all night-
Talking poetry and politics and peaceful protest.
Our friends at Dow made LSD, escaping momentarily from reality.
We gave the peace sign to our peers, the finger to the “Pigs”.
We marched on the courthouse, shouting
“Hell NO, we won’t go!”
When your number came up, you went.
Our young men flew off to Viet Nam,
Brainwashed into groupthink.
We saw guardsmen gun down students at Kent State
for their objection to the war.
We went off to Woodstock to hear Hendrix,
Haven, Baez and Santana singing protest songs,
and shout the FISH cheer with 400 thousand.
Our boys came back in a box,
Or with pieces gone, shrapnel wounds, psychosis...
They were spit on for My Lai, agent Orange
and slaughter of the innocent.
We went on with our lives,
became the “Baby Boomers” having “Generation X”.
We bought houses, tended lawns, worked 9 to 5,
fought off the nightmares at night,
placed Peace signs on the hills above town,
and saw in our minds a single flower
in the barrel of a soldier’s gun.

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