birth of the rebel

it's 1968 rock and roll is peaking,indie folk and poetry is finally being recognized by the institution as a certain voice of the population,soul, disco and the black community are making moves.jfk was shot in 63, mlk in 68.....

vietnam is at an all time high for u.s. combatant losses....

what do you have to say?
pro- anti war,drugs,racism, etc......

where would you have been?

no use of technology after 68.....

woodstock wasn't until 69 so all the stuff built up until that release vented here....



think b4 o rielly fox news and i pods............

any length.......

partna up...

whateva.......

jus be historically accurate...

and take a stand.............

music,political and social references extremely welcomed. as well as anti of the pre mentioned.........

...

[font=Comic Sans MS]
.:Ya Groovy: The Electric Ladies and Gentlemen:.


Living for the blow by blow
Yes, that’s how it would go
The rollicking, the rolling
Insisting on forever looking Skyward
Those lucid diamonds
Available for everyone
Mutual admirations
Fueled by Grass-so-Lean
A deep scene; a lot of it so "acidic"  
Posture was "high"
And it was the nomenclature
Names included signs of a lucky nature
Where the lucid loosies
They lit that same sky on the daily
Far out were those vapors within their depth
The kind undeniably etching a sense of peace
Felt was an immense and overt intensity
The propensity of making claim
How anyone disconnected
They had a right to
build their own bridge back  

::Fact

Seemed such a long time ago
Those Fire and Guitar licks
The Politics...
The Powered Flowers and
The Raised Fists
Fits of infamous fights
The ones for Civility titled
We’re into Our Human Rights
Where days and nights
The plans, the dreams
They’d make their way
Making a way for a return flight
The one back to Our Virtues
And did we mention?
During and throughout each take off
During each flight back...no, not at all,
It wasn’t at all Pitch Black
But within those Hazy Purples
Screaming were those siren songs
Blaring at such a fevered pitch
Scratching at a well known itch
The Rich in the MillHouse
They had alotta tricks
Then as quickly as it all began...

::It all ended

The whole era seemed to clock out
Too many killings as the Hypocrites
They continued to sprout
Too much apathy, too much doubt
Creativity upended; virgin minds
Too many truths got bended
As a lethargic leap was intro^duced
The chaos was jump-started
Then it descended
Then, the rain poured down
A steady drowning took place
Each cloud burst drenching the
tears of another passing hearse
As another wayward napalm cloud
Etched itself to another incoherent verse
and the Multi^bull shit…just got too loud
Hijacked by "Television is The Best Vision" crowd
Where seriousness took a backseat and bowed

::Out

And the Laugh-in...came in
and throughout that scene
What rumbled was a Silent Majority
Saboteurs who were proud of the staged irregularity
Finally laying claim...making it stick
Saying these pure of heart; that
They were purely insane
Distorting “hourly”, their reality
Attaching themselves to a
Not so vigilant innocence
Co-opting the culture like vultures
Where the foul fowl; they rolled foul
Eating their young alive.

::Jive Turkeys

No thanks given, no remorse  
This era strayed off course and
For a long time it would remain there
Future becoming more or less kinkier then before
Depending on one's
Artistic and Social-list[ed] point of view
This; a thing we all knew...
Heard about it?  It's all true
This was to be "The Never...landed"
But it was never ever going to be the same way again
This time was the "Fire next time"
Ask anyone on the scene
Was this The Progress..
How about that Process?
The...nameless claiming blameless..
Seemingly it was only to be for the "momentary"
Then came the "Monetary" and
with it...cold adjustments
Made to Get Laid, then

::Fade

1968 POETRY THEN
                Vs.
2013, 30th of June, POETRY TODAY

"Hell, no, We won't go!!"
“Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?”

“The whole world is watching”
"Make love, not war"
“Girls say Yes, to boys who say No”

“1-2-3-4
W.D.W.Y.F.W”  (WE-DON"T-WANT-YOUR-FUCKING-WAR)

I want all you young’uns to know, back in the day, the best poetry wasn’t composed in café, but on the streets, strike lines and byways.  Poets composed prose on bricks to be thrown.  

Now before any of you wiper-snappers dismiss me as old blow hard, realize that today, on the 6th of June, 2013, the Supreme Court of the United States of America, has ruled that women are indeed, not the equal of men.  So for the sake of nostalgia let me suggest;

“No pill, no Viagra
No IUDs, no vasectomies”

Or

“Mennonites don’t decide my rights!
Now’s the time to stand and fight”

Or

“Scalia, Alito, nor Kennedy
Won’t decide
What’s right for me”

Or

“Hobby Lobby
Hands of my body
I’m nothing like
Your neighbor’s donkey”

Or even worse

“I have the Constitutional Right to fuck
Who I want
When I want
Without fear of disease
Or pregnancy?”

If you don’t know what I’m speaking of, you should.
Now excuse me, I need to recycle some old bricks.

nice snug............

Thanks

Scotland 1968 (I was there)

We marched in protest of war in Vietnam
Our daughters in their pram
We collected money for medical relief
For those who'd come to grief

We helped to start a shop for OXFAM
Before such shops were common
Many causes we sought to commit
We tried to do our bit

Wow... It's a terrible tale, but beautifully written. Wow.

johnrot said:nice snug............

I agree.  

Why thank you ML, I'm flattered.

Birth of a Rebel

1969 ...

i was gagging on my own breath.
my lungs had forgotten the simple rules of

In
Out

In

Out

it was all

In

In

In

In
In

strangling my eyes until they were coughing out blind fear.

my father placed the viper between us and I could already taste it's poison delivered in sharp strikes.

he took my hand and placed it in his.

bracing my forefinger he ran it over the crown of his head through his mane.

feel that he whispered,
guard in Attica gave that to me.

he moved my finger from his left temple then right.

feel that he questioned,
electro shock therapy Wards Island.

i looked in his eyes and they were choking too, and it soothed me.

we sat in silence for a moment and the coiled snake rose from it's nest.

a lesson had to be taught so I stopped crying.

she bit me.

hard.

but he was my antidote.  

his name wasn't
Garvey nor Malcolm.

and no one mistook him for a King.

he wasn't a Panther either
but he was caged nonetheless
tagged for study in many a zoo.

subjugated
castrated
mind mutilated

while I pledged my allegiance every morning to the very people who were doing this to him ...

... doing this to us.

Today, July 2 is his birthday.
Shot and killed by the NYPD thirty eight years ago at the age of 38 in 1976 which would have made him 76 ... today.  

[the police said it was self defense
- i guess there's no code for assisted suicide]

Funny how numbers can work that way ...

because the one now captured in my cell phone is a picture of my daughter's forearm.

Her message was simple when she sent it some time ago:

I'm here in Zuccoti Park with Occupy Wall Street. This is the phone number they've written in marker on my forearm in case I'm arrested.

I love you.

Months later the message was:

Dad come march with me,
Come march for Trayvon.

So I did.

And I watched her march
through the canyons of granite and steel
Past the wall of Blue,
And she echoed chants of ...

No justice! - No peace!
No justice! - No peace!  ... and ...

Who's streets? - Our streets! ...

... Her and I visited my father's grave a few months ago.

As I prayed in silence
She broke down sobbing
although she had never met him.

Her breathing was all

In

In
In

In

In

And through her tears he found her
And she found him,
the antidote.  

Another Year Gone

To escape this life
I chose to enlist with friends
Inspired by the films of my childhood
Looking for something

Spirits running low
Busy crawling under barb wire
While live rounds are passing overhead
To earn military green

I've put it together
All of my adolescent dreams
And I wanna live up to my family tree

Here in the city of Hue
I'm shoulder to shoulder with a friend
Ain't nothin' like a movie screen
Dodging mortar shells

Men like dead dogs
Familiar faces already gone
Heroin and no moral taking their toll
Losing sight of it all

Seasons change
Part of me out the door
While Negros wave a new flag

Arrived in Kansas
Funny people spitting on me
Throwing feces and calling to question
What I did over there

I don't understand
Is this what I came back for
To be pressured to say I killed mothers
Still holding their babies

Eyes are cold
Protests in every color
Ostracized for what I didn't do

Finally heading back
My fingers ache with excitement
I signed up for another tour
In the present tense

I'd rather die among my own

Fuck the Government
Fuck Going to School
Fuck Going to Work
I hate the system
I hate the hate
around me
surrounding me
This free country which you speak of
Doesn't exist
White kids are judging black kids
We didn't ask for this war
Or the drugs that came with
I do enjoy them from time to time
but I hate what they did to our country
They call us united
but half of us are unhappy
feel separate
Thank god we have each other
because we dont have the governments support
If I go missing make sure to report
because the feds probably got me
just because I want peace makes me an anarchist
makes me a communist
Fuck you to the man
I didn't ask for this
Or to be born here
but I'm thankful for what I do have
like we all should be in these troubled times
The music and the love keeps me fueled to rebel

 

Title:  Raising up a rebel

It was nineteen sixty-eight, and I was twelve years old
Shy and meek; I had not yet learned how to be bold
or even that there were people of color with different stories to be told
I learned from television, that a revolution was coming, and politics were about to be sold

I learned about violence when JFK was shot
And I watched dance moves from Casey Kasem, and that was hot
People were gyrating and grooving; Beatles albums were waiting to be bought
Lou Reed, the Stones, the doors; someone said that they were all smoking pot

I learned about war when my older cousin did not come home
From Vietnam, everyone was grieving, I’d been shown grief at a funeral home
Woodstock, what a party it was; such peaceful mayhem and chaos were still unknown
I listened to the news about the event, and I was stuck dreaming in a traffic jam of my own

I watched the Miss USA pageants on television in awe
Secretly knowing that I’d never be one of them; beauty in myself I never saw
I put away my Barbies and my bra, and I began to develop as a woman with teenage hormones raw
And I had my first kiss; it was springtime, MLK was now gone, for speaking against the law

I collected piles of used records from friends who gave me a good deal
I guess it was those people that influenced me in the end; I pillaged, but I did not steal
Lou Reed and Joe Cocker were in one of the piles; playing those 45’s never got more surreal
I opened my bedroom window, laid on my bed, and I listened; rock and roll was coming, I would just feel

The times they were changin’, and I spent my teens rearrangin’
Grew my hair long; wore bell bottoms, and grooved in my suede coat with fringe
I had a fascination with drummers; I would say the music was raising up a rebel
I never dug folk music, and I can attest that disco sucked in 1970: I still have the tee shirt; it always will

They say that soldiers brought pot back from the war
It wasn’t the only thing that those boys brought back; they didn’t know what was in store
Protesting, disgust; there was disdain for the uniforms that they wore
But my memories are of my tall and handsome uncle who left a boy and returned a man after completing his chore

What came next was freedom
And free speech which all led to a movement toward peace and love
Nineteen sixty-eight raised a rebel, and the seventies were a heavy time to live
Those were the days; Oh what I would give