the lorraine motel

i had a vision of a dirty bomb
tear my head completely apart in Vietnam;
i saw the mushroom cloud explode in '45
Trinity was born!  i was barely alive,
fed a steady diet of black & white
watching John Glenn take his historic sub-orbital flight
into near space on a rocket ship.
he nearly died but i didn't know it,
hiding under the classroom seats
with Peggy Sue and her forbidden treats,
so near to touch but i'd have to wait.
i saw Kennedy get blown away
in his black limo on a late November day.
watched the flowers that people held
growing old until they smelled
like thousands of dead bodies in a distant Cambodian field.
i saw them & felt chilled
when Martin Luther was struck down
on a balcony near my hometown.
he was hit with a thud and bled and bled,
but it didn't matter what anyone said:
The Dream still lives, the body gone,
remembering the Selma bridge
hoping to see the promised land over heartbreak ridge.
and i heard Nixon really got pissed!
he put countless enemies on his list
& his White House was infiltrated by crooks
who to this day in countless history books
have an amazingly large asterisk by their name
believing Honor was just a fool's game;
it didn't matter that people died;
they still cocktail partied and lied and lied and lied,
believing until the end that God was on their side!
and i indeed saw their God walking across my rice paddy water
leading His sheep to another senseless slaughter,
while i cleaned my gun under the afternoon sun
and waited.