Beserkeley

I ran down stairs and alley ways,

Between the Berkeley streets,

On my way home to dinner;

The Parent’s “Intellectual meet and greets”.

We played in the Solano tunnel,

The trains by then, long gone.

Smoked my first lit cigarette,

In Sproul Hall with my new friend Juan.

Juke boxes played Martha and the Vandalia’s

“Dancing in the Streets” …

The rhetoric was Free Speech,
The actual actions, 'tween the sheets.

I watched the Fairmont elevator

From the window in my bedroom…

Go up and down till two AM,

I always fell asleep too soon.

Years later, there was People’s Park

Riots exploding with student's wrath…

I took shelter in Moe’s Book store

Discovering more Kerouac.

There was Ludwig in the fountain,

Another Campanile suicide…

I globbed on to free thought and songs,

Celebrating that hell of a ride.

My open-minded point of view

Is my family’s gift to me…

My nonjudgmental parents,

Gave me permission to live free.

‘