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.

‘

Giving Up (about a friend)

Again, another day passes,

Through fog like an Amtrak train…

Always forward on the tracks,

Towards the future and my bed again.

Bedridden days, pass in sleep and dreams,

Between the past and the forbidden…

Vague memories of the good years,

To present races, now dreamt bedridden.

Change is now my constant;

How fast life styles can rearrange…

My house, my room, bed and dreams,

All subject to sudden change.

Gone is the independence,

Of making decisions, right or wrong…

The end of future dreams,

Is a fact, now dead. They’re gone!

Wait a minute, laying here,

Never was my plan!

Tomorrow I’ll get out of bed,

I’ll force myself to stand.

Step by step I’ll walk again,

While the PT’s on their phone…

Call my family to announce,

On Monday, I’m going home.

Crazy Old

I saw an old friend at the Post Office,

He appeared to be quite insane…

I got home, pulled off my stocking cap,

And realized, I looked the same.

I still think like a seventh grader,

Unaware, I’m now an old codger…

Ugly, weak, disheveled, forgetful;

I am the failed artful dodger.

All my friends admired me,

I smelled each rose along the trail…

Clocks still stop for no one though;

My immortal quest, a colossal fail.

The changing world and politics,

Make it easier to say goodbye.

Yet, I will never forget my love for life…

In the end, I can’t deny it or lie.