1984

What a year – Tim was just a little boy of 25 – naïve and Lost in ‘innocence’ a critical time bomb waiting to happen Blue-eyed he listened to Nena’s 99 Red Balloons flying high While Band Aid wondered whether They Know it’s Christmas Sticking plaster for an ignorant conscience Plasters cast for broken souls and hunger Summer Olympics in Los Angeles the world disunited As the Soviet Union boycotted the Festival of Youth Hollywood and Universal Studios Footloose competed With The Killing Fields for consumption and Oscars Dancing in full view of the Apocalypse Khmer Rouge and Holding Out for a Hero Miner’s Strike in Great Britain with Margaret Thatcher’s Heavy handbag crushing legitimate opposition’s pickets Reagan became ‘acting’ president and Space Shuttle discovered That we have only have one lonely planet so we must muck it up Cold War awaited nuclear freeze and Hiroshima was declared a minor aberration Metallica roared Blitzkrieg inferno and Armageddon Iraq fought Iran and guess who was supporting whom The US supplied Saddam Hussein with poison gas while In Afghanistan they supported Taliban and Mujahedeen ‘The enemy of our foe is our good friend’ Coalitions must change freely in axes of evil George Orwell comes to mind with Eurasia Oceania and Eastasia altering alliances but then history must be forbidden It can mislead young minds and wars have to be waged For the sake of gory glory and self-righteous delight Who reads books anyway and why and for what They might seduce us to hail love and compassion In 1984 Tim longed for flowers in hair scribbled Peace signs On flare bottom jeans 20 years past The Sound of Silence Had not mustered the courage yet to challenge the inevitable Collusion of his inactivity with happy murder for money and oil Slowly though he finds his belligerent voice and Concludes that the 80’s offer more than nostalgia