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Blood, Sweat, and Fire

American History in Verse

By Terri LyonsPublished 7 years ago 2 min read
Top Story - August 2017
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Blood, Sweat, and Fire

The Wonderful World of Disney gave us a Sunday evening rest,

We anticipated Ed Sullivan’s line up of guests

Until Huntley and Brinkley had breaking news

Of another bloody episode of what we were going through,

There was a march on the Pentagon,

Pressure was mounting and Johnson was sweating.

While the politicians were working to save face

Deafening chants were demanding an end to the war.

Something started with a cab driver in Newark,

Cops didn’t like the way he drove the car,

Said he was driving it up the down street and so they took him in.

Somebody from CORE told somebody from the Freedom Party and they went back to family and friends.

By and by everybody was around the precinct and soon windows were smashed in and that sealed the fate.

Newark had a spell of looting and then it quiet down,

Only to be rallied up by bottles and Molotov’s

But wait;

At the same time Cleveland was hot and their issues hit the street,

And just a little more than a week later,

Detroit went up in flames;

An ember flicked over into Milwaukee and they ended up doing the same,

Everybody was on fire,

It seemed like it was the end days

Fear, anger, hatred, and power

Was about to bring America down

Something, somewhere had to change.

The Kerner Commission tried to figure out why

We were fussin and fightin and burning down the cities,

Finally, they admitted that there were two different societies.

It was concluded that this great nation of ours

Created, condoned and maintained a system of despair,

And the only way to repair the damage that had been done

Would be a total redistribution of wealth benefitting everyone,

But that wasn’t gonna happen

President Johnson pushed it to the side

Because now, it was about another war,

All attention turned

To injustice, carnage, and bombs

Upon the defenseless and the poor

No, not here,

But on the other side of the world,

In South Viet-Nam.

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