Following several open mic gigs where I have shared this prose poem and the interest from several parties in it, I have decided to upload it to my website.
Enjoy
My generation were at the Isle of Wight in 69, frolicking naked in the sea, grooving to the music, curled up in fields, with flowers in our hair, smoking marijuana and enjoying free love, young men with long hair, in 27inch flares, young women burning bras, wearing paper underwear, sleeping under stars, beautiful free spirits.
My generation had cheesecloth tops, Liverpool poets, Wilson and Heath, the birth of rock, psychedelia, prints of Lowry, a drowning Ophelia, Japanese kimonos and little red books. They were wild, free, filled with dope and hope, smoking weed and sowing the seeds of a revolutionary future.
My generation marched through the streets of London, demanding an end to all wars, the banning of the bomb, telling the Yanks to get the hell out of Vietnam,
My generation thought they could change the world and turn the power dynamic of the ruling elite on its’ head and bring about a utopian new world order instead.
My generation voted for Brexit and BJ, are complicit with environmental drift, with their wood burners, their four by fours their final salary pensions, holiday homes in France.
My generation prefer to watch Strictly rather than dance naked, sagging bodies not quite as they used to be, as critical of the youth of today, as their elders were of them, in their heyday.
My generation wrote essays with an introduction to the pros and cons of an argument, leading to a proposition and a well-argued conclusion. Today my generation use the Internet and Google, to soak up drip-fed conclusions to substantiate bigoted stances on anything, from education to immigration.
My generation were idealists, romanticists, poets, peacemakers, lovers, innovators, internationalists. So where, I ask, where the fuck have all the flowers gone.
Peter Kay