Birthday speech

Everybody is whispering 

No

Everybody is screaming but my hearing is bad

and their screams reach me as whispers.

I don’t know what their problems are

I don’t understand what is going on over there 

Over there over there

Why don’t they speak up?

My creeping deafness annoys me.

Their muted cries anger me

Why don’t they speak up?

Why can’t they plainly articulate 

Step by step a reasonable explanation of the situation 

because 

I can’t see through the flames that engulf them

And their cries are buried in the roar of the collapsing structure 

And I leap out of the way of the fleeing refugees.

Hey everybody, Cool out!

Brothers and sisters, Cool out!

I want to go back to bed and put the pillows over my head

and turn on the old music

Turn it up real loud 

Country Joe

Well come on all you big strong men

Uncle Don needs your help again 

Got himself in a terrible jam 

Way down yonder in

Where the hell are we?

Uncle Don is confused and stupid 

but the explainers try to explain what is plain

idiocy.

It’s not a war, it’s an excursion, he said 

Did someone suggest he use the word “incursion”

but that was an unfamiliar word and he confused it with the familiar word?

Tourists on excursions came to his casino

and to him Iran is another big casino 

where Desperate Don can try his luck

and bet the nation’s wealth on a spin of the 

Wheel of Misfortune 

And the wheel’s still in spin 

and there’s no telling whose number is up 

when it comes to a stop.

“Incursion”

That word triggered my elderly memory machine.

Incursion was the word Nixon found to name the bombing of Cambodia 

I’m sorry to bore you with ancient history and old man memories, but once I get to gabbing I can’t help myself,

and Nixon’s Incursion — nobody knew what the word meant, 

and as Clean Gene McCarthy helpfully pointed out, it has no verb form that makes grammatical sense.

You can incur a debt, but not a military operation.

So incursion was the perfect word for his purpose,

which was to obscure his purpose which was to

Invade and Attack and Expand the war he was elected to end and beat Southeast Asia into submission until he achieved Peace With Honor.

Kids who were supposed to fight this shit weren’t buying it and maybe their parents were less eager to have their boys come home in a box. A dignified transfer, they call it now.

The expansion of the war wasn’t too many months after the story of the My Lai Massacre went public. The military tried to cover it up. I read about it in Reader’s Digest and began to realize all the Truth Justice American Way propaganda was bullshit. Our Manifest Destiny was powered by slavery and genocide. My Lai Wounded Knee Corlear’s Hook — ever hear of that? On and on —

Rape! Murder!

Come on all you big strong men.

Look what’s happening out in the streets,

Marching charging feet, boy, 

but not in Palm Beach Gardens, where I sat on the living room floor, sixteen years old, sick with mononucleosis, in front of the stereo,

listening to WMUM, the underground radio station, play songs of revolution and the Revolution was in our heads for a little while — can you feel the rumblings as your head comes crumbling down and you know what I mean? 

I’m sorry I’m sorry, inflicting the boomer soundtrack on you and I’m and I’m rambling and ranting, I know.

But it’s my birthday and you insisted I make a speech

and this is all I’ve got