StarPoet Newsletter Vol. X, No. XIII

We thought music would change the world
But spent our time in smoke-filled coffee houses
Determining whether grass or acid worked best at concerts
And how best time drugs for the headline act;
I played guitar, learned my Dylan tunes, knew all the words
To Blowing in the Wind Like a Rolling Stone,
Argued the Airplane's merits and Quicksilver Messenger,
And the odds of Hendrix and Joplin dying so close together,
Wondered openly if Morrison in Paris was really dead at all:
Asphyxiated on vomit, overdosed on heroin, heart failure without an autopsy.
All with ten months. So foul and fair a time we had not seen

Older we were when ancients still walked the earth,
Playing double Pinnochio on the village quad,
Offering our solutions for War and Peace,
The failures of Capitalism, LBJ, and Richard Nixon;
We were brighter than Brittanica and could count on our fingers
What must be do solve our racial problems by decades end.
We marched beside King, marched with the Panthers,
Raised our fists, shouted our slogans,
Arm in arm, well placarded and buttoned,
Listened to our songs and discovered it really was the singer
As we passed our classes and could no longer hide on campus
Bogarting a joint, doing a number, or pretending cocaine was safe
While we idly studied our transformational grammars.