Almost Cut My Hair March 03, 2018

Again, a poem that got lost somewhere inside the secret closets of my flash drive files. It meant something when I wrote it. At least to me . . . I think. Probably something to do with politics. Black Lives Matter and All Lives Matter are mentioned in there somewhere . . . along with the Kent State Massacre, May o4, 1970 . . . and me getting old . . . well, nothing new there. I guess with all that's going on with Gun Control, more school shootings ("young people speaking their minds/Getting so much resistance from behind . . ." -Stephen Stills), and the NRA looking to go a round or two with teenagers fed up with being murdered while studying math, theatre . . . well, this small poem seemed appropriate. {smiles} P.S. If you want to read the poem off the art work, AND it's to small to read, just click on the picture and you should get a larger version . . . 

*Almost Cut My Hair

. . . my long hair bothers me . . .

a dirty red symbol of rebellion and—
dare I say it—youth.
Worn-out now, thinned to string now,
more of a theory now,
slowly evolving, dissolving into a winter,
a winter it will never recover from.
The spring no longer sings to me.

What’s left of it, my hair,

spends far too much time this morning
tickling my nose, and my ears and high diving
off the top of my head into my coffee cup . . .

I must be getting old, or older, or something.

Last thing to go?
The childish addiction for coolness.

These days I favor comfort over 

sweat pants feel more at home
around my expanding waste than blue jeans.
Beards are out, too messy a thing,
a goatee remains but merely as a cover-up
for the saggy skin below my chin . . . chins.

No cause to march for anymore,

to fight and scream for . . . anymore.
Black Lives Matter! White Lives Matter!
It’s all just vacant noise to me ‘cause
matter just doesn’t matter anymore.

The news . . .  weary, dreary tabloid vomit

mouthed by trained canaries,
melting one into another . . . short clips
of weeping widows and angry fathers
and store-bought politicians  
banging impotent fists against the podium . . .
for as long as the cameras continue to stare at them.

Everyone raging these days, everyone shouts

so loud that the world has gone deaf.
Fingers wagging in the stranger’s face
like a babysitter scolding an unruly dog,
“Bad, doggie! Don’t drag your ass     
across the carpet . . . Bad, BAD, doggie!”

Kent State

not even a bloody memory anymore.
The stains wiped clean . . . time . . .
such a diligent, thorough housekeeper.

Where’s Janis, and Jimmy, and David C,

faint echoes now whimpering
from iPods and CDs
or whatever the hell
they call those damn things.

My past . . . vague glimpses of acid trips

and drunkenness and cigarettes
and girls with flowers in their eyes . . .
Made it through another war
not much different than the other wars to come.

I’ll keep my hair long for as long

as it cares to stick around.
Maybe some years from now

I’ll notice it . . .

tickling my nose, my ears

and high diving off the top of my head
into my coffee cup . . .

And I’ll wonder why I never got it cut.

Woodie o9-o6-15
(rewrites o3-o2-18)
*Song: Almost Cut My Hair
written by David Crosby