Another Rotten Day

ANOTHER ROTTEN DAY

Sept 11 1973

With the help of Kissinger and the bloody CIA
Marxists hold a deadly coup in the country of Chile.
Salvador Allende was made to go away,
and replaced by the puppet Augusto Pinochet.

Sep 11 1978

A medical photographer, Janet Parker was her name
was the last life that smallpox was ever allowed to claim.
She caught it at Binghamton U, and then nothing was the same,
vaccine created earlier so her death was a crying shame.

Sep 11 1987

Dan Rather walked off the set of CBS Evening News,
upset that tennis matches had superseded audiences views.
When match was over, TV was dark, no one on set but crews,
proving once and for all that ol' Dan had much too short a fuse.

Sep 11 1987

In Santa Monica California, actor Lorne Greene passed away among tears,
a star of Battlestar Galactica and Bonanza he had garnered many cheers
Yet pneumonia and infirmity had proven true his family’s fears,
he would have been five hundred and four if counted in dog years.

Sep 11 1991

Mike Tyson, the champion boxer got into a legal scrape,
he was arrested and charged this day, accused of violent rape.
He spent three years in jail from which he could not escape
and bolstered his reputation as a primordial, vicious ape.

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This day you see, has lots of things to remember with dismay.
No matter how much we try, bad things happen anyway.
So thank the stars, your god or gods, get on your knees and pray
you are safe and whole and alive to feel pain, today and every day.

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This poem appeared in "Breathing for Clouds" available from Big Table Publishing.

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©2014 Christopher Reilley

 
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