1984
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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
Copyright © Kai Michael Neumann | Year Posted 2018
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