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Ode To The Sixties

by Chris Sorrenti



if you’re going to San Francisco...

how a song pulls images into memory
releases them when played again:
a ten year old and his family
on their way to Expo 67
Scott McKenzie dominating transistor air waves

be sure to wear...

imagine a world without
cell phones - bank cards – microwave ovens –
PCs - video games – DVDs -
color TV barely in existence
Captain Kirk, young - Laugh In - Lost In Space – Bewitched -
Dean Martin - John Wayne and Lennon, Harrison alive
Beatles still together

some flowers in your hair...

with the monster, progress
ceaselessly clawing at my door
I no longer laugh at my father
when he reminisces about the thirties

you’re going to meet some gentle people there...


© 1998

930 hits as of January 2024

03/01/2014

Posted on 03/01/2014
Copyright © 2024 Chris Sorrenti

Member Comments on this Poem
Posted by Jim Benz on 03/01/14 at 11:49 PM

Nothing like time (and your own nostalgia) to make you appreciate the nostalgia of your parents. But I still love San Francisco--even if I can't even find a good radio station there anymore. Or that Haigt Ashbury (sp?) is pretty much gentrified. Or that Fisherman's Wharf is now little more than a gaudy mall. *sigh*

Posted by George Hoerner on 03/02/14 at 01:47 PM

Very nice Chris. I have been working on something in my mind for the past month on the past and what it does or doesn't mean.

Posted by Laura Doom on 03/02/14 at 07:05 PM

...the Kennedy assassinations, Vietnam, Cuban Missile Crisis, Bloody Sunday--I like your version better...

Posted by Laura Doom on 03/02/14 at 07:20 PM

Ok--my knowledge base is somewhat hazy; I've fast-tracked forward from seed to deflorescence there. I guess the observation was meant to be the tendency to employ selective memory, not that this was the point of your poem Chris. It made me think, all the same [& that is a significant achievement :]

Posted by Quentin S Clingerman on 03/02/14 at 09:19 PM

A quick and pleasant trip down memory lane. I really have to think about what happened in a particular decade since I am now in my eighth!

Posted by Philip F De Pinto on 03/05/14 at 02:47 PM

your ode does great justice to the era, Chris I remember the sixties as a great time to be young and alive. The incredible music, the incredible movements, the incredible voices, the all of which were liberating and reflective. I remember the era as a time whose focus was not this overbearing and runaway technology, but rather humanity and all that that entails. Too bad the drugs undermined a good portion of those efforts, but drugs notwithstanding, everything else about the time, remains top shelf.

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