Counter Culture
 
 

This broken silence goes out to a dead soul.
My friend, what became of 
our early morning conversations
and all of those juvenile exaggerations?
The race of the sloth was so easy with you.
We had no idle rivals.
You and I suffered so much together;
barked orders and incessant uniformity,
those days of quantified intelligence.
There was a time when we soaked up the sun like dogs
and I spoke to you over a rum and coke instead of a counter.
But that was then and this is now,
your eyes, glazed over with a dark film, tell me.
That straight-haired girl of yours slinks in the background,
that girl with all the passion of wet flannel.
She never could raise a withered word for me,
not out of that graveyard of a mouth.
And now, in my impotent anger, these words
are the best I can do to lash back at that apathy.
I speak of counter culture and you work behind a counter -
such is the way of our private cold war.
Was the dollar beating on your door that hard?
I hope it gives you some comfort for your drudgery.
I hope I have done your memory justice.
 
 

(C) Copyright 1999
Nick Kellaway 
All Rights Reserved