What Just Happened?

by Richard Tornello

Were I to do, today what I did then,
If we were to do what we did then,
Dropped into the 21st Century from
The 1960’s and 70’s or even earlier time,
We’d all be in jail.
Our teachers who sometime gruffly pushed us into the lockers
straight in our eyes stared cold as ice,
questioned our actions reason why.
“Cause it sounded like a good idea?”
OR
Looked the other way allowing us to make the mistake,
maybe twice,
would be locked up and someones toy.
Todays young men and boys
are not allowed to play,
to learn and jostle around since
fear and legalities abound.
Nannification of the young?
Hmmm
From whence this plot?

No manufacturing we’ve got!

A service society we’ve become.
The root of the word
from Latin being slave,
and who wants an uppity slave?
From whence this plot.
No manufacturing we’ve got?
Where did it go?
No place for a family to grow,
2 million in prison business or so.
Slaves and service our lot.
Been sold out ; buy who runs this plot
of land so once fecund, now rust and waste
and waist it grows, our land fills, not with farms
but shopping malls and cheap tract houses?

These questions I ponder as do the old folk of then,
And wonder who and whence this plot.