Son, you asked what happened
to the shining sunsets of the Sixties.
They were stolen by fat guys
in spotted boxer shorts
with oversized wallets.
Just as we opened the doors
to freedom the wallflowers
got scared, thought we’d blow
their cover of respectability.
Their fear grew so enormous
they went berserk.
They stopped hippie girls
from waving their nude hips
on farm meadows just outside big cities.
Folk singers went country.
War became the ticket to success.
Wall Street twisted even more crooked
than it had ever been.
The poor lost the little they had.
The majority voted for buffoons.
My friend, Helen, sat on the stone wall bawling
by the fountain on the Plaza when
she heard the news about her lover
killed by a booby trap near Da Nang .
She was so pretty then,
now a bag lady rumpled on the sidewalk
against the window outside Abercrombie & Fitch.