All we are saying ...

So we sat on the lawn and chanted

“Hell no, we won’t go!” over and over

“Hell no, we won’t go!” but what did we know,

idealists in a world gone mad,

but kids, really, still green, individuals

following the crowds, protesting, fighting

“the man” and social injustice, civil rights,

and a war in Vietnam, our own fears

that our number would come up,

and we’d be Canada bound, exiling ourselves,

or worse, scarred by the ravages inflicted;

“make love, not war,” we sang out,

“give Peace a chance,” as we zoned out,

tuned out, dropped out, “far out,”

“power to the people,” pot and acid,

LSD, the SDS, tokin’ and smokin’

because our vision was set well above

the status quo, a white-collar job

and a home in Suburbia, a white picket

fence in the black and white America

we found ourselves living, sitting there

on the lawn in bell bottom jeans, sandals,

and a tie-dye T, chanting, “Hell no, we won’t

go; make love not war”;

                                         yet, we knew what

we saw, what we envisioned could be,

should be, and it’s 2020 – we should all

be dead, long past our 30^th birthdays,

the world coming to an end, then, -

50 years, 60 years, and we’re still sitting,

beaten down, beaten back, gassed and clubbed,

but not broken, just maybe too old for this shit.

And now we see among us younger faces,

what was once upon a time our own faces,

believing, envisioning, knowing, “Hell no,

it ain’t so,” decades later and youth rising up,

tuning in, standing up and sitting here with us,

power of the people, into the zone of rebellion,

rebelling against that same “man,” that same

status quo, that same black and white America

returning, picking up, perhaps, where we left off,

our lives but interrupted these years since then,

and together now, we cry again, cry still

for change, change late in coming, but come

it must, come it will in this new “age of Aquarius,

Jupiter aligned with Mars, Harmony and

Understanding, Sympathy and Trust abounding,”

idealists spanning the generations, ready to stand

together, chanting on the front lawn of America,

the front lawn of a world ready for change; we know

what we see, we know what we envision to be:

“give peace a chance. No more falsehoods

or derision, Golden living dreams of visions.

mystic crystal revelation.”