1969

An unrhymed ghazal about the events occuring the year I was born.

January 30: Four Beatles sing an energetic encore on the roof of Apple Records
in the cold, for forty minutes, but the London police just cannot Let it Be.

July 8: A trickle of troops begins to bleed back into Betsy’s tired cloth
from jungle jig to hot, intense July and jeers as awful "welcome home"s.

July 20: Mankind leaps over his own troubled/starving/wartorn into space
and stabs the red white and blue into a pale, accepting moon.

August 15: Flower children flock, their drugged wings muddy, spinning,
singing like Snoopy’s pal all music-dizzied from the frenzied world.

September 2: The automatic teller machine premieres upon my day of birth;
I debut in a play where money is both heralded director and critic most unkind.