REQUIEM
A Memoir in Doggerel
(to the tune of “Sweet Betsy from Pike”
Oh all you dead hippies, I miss you, I do,
so I’ll sing you this song and I’ll try to sing true.
But don’t hold it against me if I can’t find the tune.
Must a dog be Sinatra to cry for the moon?
I was just seventeen when I let my hair grow.
It pulled hard on my brain and enlightened me so
that I gave up my bias against race, creed or hue.
I read the Bhagavad-Gita and became a Hindu.
Sing a groovy, far out man, that’s cool brother, peace.
Hello Buffalo Springfield, Stone Ponies, and Grease,
Electrícal Banana, Sergeant Pepper, and Truth.
Hello Mamas and Papas, sweet promise of youth.
The most difficult bias to rid, I admit,
was the one I had held since I’d hung up my mitt:
To place a woman on a pedestal, which in no way could hurt
if the pedestal was high enough that I could look up her skirt.
Yes, those were the days of free love and free sex.
Alas, we took small advantage of the free VD checks.
Instead we shared tiny love bugs from west coast to east
plus infections of prostate, urethra and yeast.
Maybe that in the end is what killed us, I fear.
The men lost their hair, the women rediscovered brassieres.
All the drugs and the love and the peace took its toll.
Now around every waist is a big jellyroll.
We forgot Rama Krishna and our mantras for TM.
Now we’re Methodists and Catholics and Lutherans again.
We used to be vegetarians and so proud of that fact.
Now we eat Oscar Mayer from vacuum-sealed packs.
We used to stay up all night to discuss the world scene,
and we’d laugh, because we viewed it through the color of dreams.
Now we’re tired by nine and there’s not much we find funny,
and our dreams, if we dream, are the color of money.
Yes, the years have so changed us, it is hard to look back
through our own kids’ harsh neo-conservative flak.
But sometimes late at night in the dark with our mate,
We whisper, “Democratic convention, 1968!”
Our parents are old now, they can’t chew their food.
We try not to stare because we know it is rude
but they are our future just as we are their past.
Who would ever have thought life could slip by so fast?
We thought our parents were demons, so deadly, so wrong.
Now we’d give anything just to see them all strong.
They have left us in charge and it’s sad but too true,
we are tired and frightened and don’t know what to do.
Sing a groovy, far out man, that’s cool brother, peace,
though the ozone and rain forests daily decrease.
The Greenhouse Effect will soon fry us like ham
and we’ll sink in an ocean of thick sewage jam.
So you mothers and fathers of hippies now dead,
oh you sons and you daughters whom we hippies bred,
please try to forgive and don’t judge us too rough.
We caused so much trouble…but not nearly enough.
And to all you dead hippies, you didn’t die alone.
We can still be connected by cellular phone.
Or you could send me an email, text message or fax,
and like spirits adrift, we’ll make a ghostly contact.
Sing a groovy, far out man, that’s cool brother, peace.
Goodbye Buffalo Springfield, Stone Ponies and Grease,
Electrícal Banana, Sergeant Pepper, and Truth.
Goodbye to illusion, sweet swift bird of youth.
