It Must Mean Something

I was driving to the clinic about my disintegrating blood

thinking about the riots in Washington,

the four deaths,

when Barry McGuire came on the radio, singing his anthem, from the sixties

‘Eve of Destruction’. You know it?

And I thought:

it must mean something, a message maybe but could something

written that far back, sixty years,

speak to the present?

Barry thought so, his voice just as urgent,

just as polemic

as it was then.

Sure, the finger on the nuclear button seemed shrill,

a little hysterical — it’d be more measured now, wouldn’t it? —

but the hate in Red China and the riots in Selma, Alabama,

seemed less so.

He was really getting worked up.

I thought his passion would pulverize the speakers.

I was getting a little scared, feel my blood fretting.

Just as I pulled in the car park,

the song came to an end.

God knows what apocalyptic anthem

would confront me on the way home.

pic courtesy of Wiki Commons