Revolution, ca. 1971
by Timothy Murphy
My father’s friend took me to lunch at Mory’s,jackets and ties, both of us ordered rarebit,
I drank three beers, and Peter, three martinis.
Back at the dorm I changed into black leather,
scooped up my gas mask and my riot helmet,
heading down to the Green to join the protest.
Went to United Church to find a rest room
and download beer, pissed beside Abbie Hoffman
whose Steal This Book was the hot new best seller.
Night before, bored shitless by Allen Ginsberg
droning and drumming in our Saybrook Courtyard,
I split to labor on three tough assignments,
a treatise on short meters in John Skelton,
a term paper on John Donne’s Songs and Sonets
and my screed for the Black Panther Party Paper.
Nixon wanted my ass for cannon fodder.
The FBI showed me my file years later:
“Harmless,” it said. A forty-year-old insult.
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