Henry’s Elegy For The Death Of The Hula Hoop

There’s something happening here,
someone’s telling you
you’d better run like hell,

the times deys a fixing to get bad,
soon we’re dying in the jungles,
soon deys sending our dead asses back home.

Put down that hula hoop,
that Elvis-in-the-Army shit
is nothing but poop.

There’s something happening here,
but what you hear can’t be poetry.
Back home, long-haired hippies

gather round and thousands march
but the Beatnik poets
and the hula hoop

have met their match and so have we.
There’s something happening here,
the times they done got bad again.