Seeped In Seventies

Darkly sarcastic and sardonically wry
We danced and we hummed to American Pie

Rolling thunder over head
Kool-Aid, Converse, Wonder Bread
Vietnam served us the blues
Cronkite was the nightly news

Worry traveled through the air
And stuck to faces everywhere

They shipped us to the Vanhoff School
We learned about the golden rule
Over finger paints and duck-duck goose
and thermoses of apple juice

Mrs. V in her floral dress
sang “raise your hands”
and “clean your mess”
and “before the day is done
try to touch the sun”

Jungle-gyms and trampolines
Wacky Packs, Mad Magazine
Baseball hats and Spider bikes
Dad’s Miller beer, Mom’s Lucky Strikes

Kick Ball, Fishing, Doorbell ditch
Hogan’s Heroes and Bewitched
Nixon, Agnew, and John Dean
We Pillow cased our Halloweens
Through wiffle ball and kick the can
“Johnny C” and Ed McMahon
Watergate was all around
in our sight and in our sound
on the news and in the paper
the Viet Cong and foiled caper

It lurked and hovered overhead
Words were written and then were said
it wormed its way into our head
that innocence was finally dead
it’s all we heard and all we read

in undercurrents a subtext grew
a dye was cast for me and you
so, we dipped our bread into the stew
enjoyed the dark side of our view
and you were me and I was you

Geoffrey Reilly is a skilled, passionate, and collaborative information designer and writer with over 30 years of experience in the software industry.  He lives in Warren, RI with his wife, two sons, and their dog, Pepsi.
In his spare time, he writes essays, poetry, and (every now and then) short stories.
You can find his creative endeavors on his blog site, Bending the Needle – Truth Hurts and on his personalwebsite.

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