I wanted to write about growing up in the sixties. This poem has taken an entirely different direction from what I had intended. Poems can do that...

I sat at my desk, pig tailed and gangly legged in my too short dress that made the boys smirk and that mocked my tom-boyish ways.

It was smocked plaid with a white collar and red string tie 

My neck hurt from The Bomb drill under the desk:

Knees up over my ears,  looking down at puke colored linoleum

Counting the old brown stuck-on bubble gum spots the janitor had missed, wondering what this had to do with avoiding disaster...

 

Teacher was at the blackboard, erasing chalk when an announcement came over the loudspeaker:

PRESIDENT KENNEDY HAS BEEN SHOT

SCHOOL HAS BEEN SUSPENDED

YOU MAY ALL GO HOME

We all sat frozen, wide eyes staring at teacher, whose alabaster face choked sobs as she talked on the phone

She hung up, wiped her face and composed herself before turning to us and saying, "Go home now..."

I walked past the flag flying half-mast, not fully comprehending it's meaning, happy for the holiday and only wanting lunch

Opening the front door, I saw my mother crying, "They killed him! Oh my God, he's dead!"

 

We started to grow old that day, and even older as the decade dragged us down...

Down to Mississippi at the bloody riverside and down to Chicago's slums and down to Watts streets of  fire and         . Sweet Bobby's bloody convention in L.A.and down to Alabama's killing fields and King's Tomb and down to Ohio's massacre and down to Vietnam's rice fields, mud oozing blood and  bones...

Down Down Down                                                           Down to the ground                                                           Down to the killing grounds