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Mid Century
Nineteen sixty was a hell of a year
If a boy was free and white
Mom stayed home with ironing
Dad came home at night
The Russians hated everyone
And that included me (I really didn’t care)
I chased frogs in the backyard pond
Between the evergreens
Mother said “say Protestant”
If anyone should ask
They handed out New Testaments
To all the grade four class
“Well thank you Lord, I’ll read it soon,
Ten verses every night” (amen brother)
I tossed it in the bottom drawer
Then rode off on my bike
Those Christian kids at summer camp
Had reptile torture down
The alpha boys from cabin three
Did not need me around
They pinned my shoulders to the ground
How could I be so weak?
They didn’t like my running shoes
They tossed ‘em in the creek
One Negro man from Louisville
Said disrespectful things
He spouted silly poetry
And danced about the ring
Well I bet two-bits a dozen ways
He’d flatten Liston down
When he did I nearly cried
It only took six rounds
Cronkite said the Communists
Were oozing through the seams
I hung out in the Twilight Zone
And slipped into my teens
Some jungle war was burning up
South Asians by the score
But my town never broke a sweat
Or even locked its doors
East coast do-wop filled the waves
In Memphis lived the king
Murray Wilson slapped his boys
Somehow that made them sing
My endless summer came and went
The girls were filling out
My voice had dropped an octave down
(What’s that all about?)
In sixty-four the tide had changed
I flipped another page
A Jewish kid named Zimmerman
Had taken centre stage
Junior high was killing me
No confidence or cool
Wet dreaming over chesty girls
Ignoring me in school
The yellow war was going badly
Private Blackman’s fight
Was playing out in living rooms
In fuzzy black and white
And I pissed all over everything
Like all my buddies did
I was wearing army surplus
One of Che Guevara’s kids
At sixteen I was heavy petting
Groping in the dark
Granny glasses, hippie girls
And balling in the park
Mom said “He’s a socialist!”
Dad said “He’s a fag!”
The cops were checking everyone
That really was a drag
It all went south when Jagger’s thugs
Rode in to Altamont
They cracked the last few sixties heads
Grooving at the front
But I would not trade one cold war day
For Gen-X boom or bust
I was born mid-century
I wear it as I must
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The
Poetry of Daniel Harrison