- Creative Writing -

On the stock market, where are those long-haired optimists now?

Where are all those long-haired optimists now?

Where are all those long-haired optimists now?
The barbers are standing over their graves, gloating.

In attics and basements
Their children are playing
With junk-beads

Inside the yellow, infantile magazines
That celebrated ghost-revolutions
Earwigs are nesting,

In crematoriums
Old protest songs are regurgitated
As piped muzak.

So much hoped for, so little altered:

On the stock market
Community workshops
Appear as listed companies.

Outside
The same truncheons
Rising and falling,

Batons conducting
Man's history, ignoring
His passing fashions, his illusions.

(Poem by Brian Patten)

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