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
