Sunday, October 24, 2021

Looking Back

RANDOM JACK POETRY HOUR: AMERICAN HISTORY

 

Looking Back

 

Ten years ago pot was illegal

In fifty of fifty states

Twenty years ago killer cops

Never made the news

(buried in the back pages)

And black lives never mattered

(except Martin Luther King)

Thirty years ago gay people

And gay love were outlawed

Forty years ago indigenous people

Had no voice in government

(certainly not in the BIA)

And the American genocide

Was not recorded in history

(remember Wounded Knee)

Fifty years ago the government

Spied on people with impunity

(Richard Nixon and the FBI)

And soldiers returning from Vietnam

Received no treatment for wounds

Of the mind spirit or soul

(Agent Orange and PTSD)

Sixty years ago college athletes

Beat up hipsters and gays for fun

Seventy years ago we stood in line

For crewcuts and puff hairdos

Eighty years ago we fought

The fascist war machine

And won

 

The years roll by

Like a river runs

The waves of change

Sweep over us

In many ways we are so much

Better than once we were

In other ways we have advanced

Only to turn back again

 

The struggle never ends

Yet history still bends

Toward the just and righteous


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