Lest We Forget, Paul Thek

I look at your art work,

Which I love.

I look at your handsome face,

Given from god above.

I look at the years that you lived.

‘33 to ‘88.

I have a little shudder, 

I rub my face.

I don't need to be told why you died in ‘88.

Even though I know your fate.

I just feel the moment,

try to take it all in.

Some say we died for our sins.

Some say so many things.

So many faces race through my mind,

Looking for answers they never did find.

A cacophony of names and souls,

All disappearing from this earth.

How scared you all must have been,

Life for a time there was pretty grim.

So many of you.

So much fear,

One by one they all disappeared.

The end was never clear.

What happened to whoozit?

I haven’t seen him for a while.

And now?

And? Now?

The fear has gone.

The sun did rise again,

Even if it took two decades to shine.

I wonder if you could believe it,

From where you stood?

So much fear gone away,

That much is good.

So much so that we hardly give it a second thought, today.

Could you have imagined that, 

Paul Thek?

Pete Hajar?

Freddie, Anthony, Rock?

(I could fill volumes with everyone who died)

People talk about the good, and the fair,

So many lost about whom ‘they’ didn’t care,

It was a massacre, right there in plain sight,

Nobody helped, so we fought our own fight.

That much I know, that much is true,

We have to look after ourselves, me & you.