I was 3 in the late sixties <br />and the television blared <br />in black and white an image <br />of United States copters brought in <br />the American coffins <br />and life turned up a spark <br />under the voice of society <br />and a bullet slained a King in the city of Memphis <br />and a Kennedy making the next step <br />around a busboy with a gun in the <br />summer of sixty-eight <br />and Hendrix was becoming a legend <br />while Youth of 70 million boomers <br />painted itself on the canvas of life, <br />I remember hunger and my old man saying, <br />“I’ll go to the track and double my money and then everything will be all right, ” <br />so my mother would give me carnation powder milk <br />and spam and the roaches all died of hunger as I watched <br />Tom and Jerry cartoons made in Hollywood USA <br />and Generals fornicated with Death <br />and Mayor Daily only took care of one race <br />which was not mine...and no where else in the planet saw my injustice <br />shown like the images off a 12inch television <br />starring under the darkness <br />of my fears and emptiness of need <br />created by sloth without pride <br />while the Democratic convention spilled onto summer <br />on Balbo street & Michigan Avenue <br />and a bunch of old time motherfuckers <br />wearing badges having <br />just one purpose to create riot <br />between two generations meeting <br />without much but everything expected <br />then the electricity was cut <br />and I remember my mother crying <br />as I stared at the television and waited for more...<br /><br />Charles Lara<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-tail-end/
