Still A Hippie After All These Years

It started with the Beats, Kerouac, Burroughs, Ginsburg

et. al., at the end of W.W. 2. Another war to end all wars?

No! They saw the pattern of endless war for profit that

went along hand in hand with Daddy in his armchair 

smoking his pipe, mommy in the kitchen baking pie,

consuming ever so nicely the latest items advertised 

to make unseen millionaires richer and said NO and 

looked for what their own lives actually were, the loves,

art, music, building ramshackle cabins in the woods 

or driving endlessly with glee of wind and freedom 

of movement unencumbered, music blasting away 

chains of conformity only for others’ benefit, YES

we saw through the myth of the Golden Corral, the

life plan that was planned for us. So “Beats” were

then “hippies”, just the next convenient label for

what was happening, same spontaneous whatever,

blazing with ecstasy, joy, tears, brilliance shining

with each new ephemeral saga…and now in old age

with openness and uncertainty still as then not having

made the pile of gold promised by the American Dream,

as poor as the Beats were in those post war days, so,

full circle, I guess, but at least I’ve lived my life awake

from that nightmare that we see ripened in full flower

of Hollywood for example, NO, the meat dream never 

got me and the powers that be will never understand…

it turns out that conformity is the most dangerous drug

of all.