Almost Cut My Hair November 15, 2018

One poem that keeps popping up . . . and I feel compelled to post it. P.S. IF you want to read the poem off the picture, you can "click" on the image and it will enlarge. {smile}

*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,

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 fashion,

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 other 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 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 11-15-18)

*Song Almost Cut My Hair 

written by David Crosby