Slippage Poem by Sheena Blackhall

At the start of the 1950s, a baby boomer
I could say Mama, Dada,
And I could walk, like a china doll
Elizabeth was crowned queen
Elvis was King
Everest was conquered
Hula Hoops were the rage
Rationing was fading into the past

In the 1960s,
I was coming into my own
Slippage, I was unvirgined
The Beatles were more popular than Jesus
Neil Armstrong walked on the moon
Barbie was paired with Ken
J.F.Kennedy bled out on his wife's lap
Martin Luther King had a dream
And Napalm scorched Vietnam
The Sixties swung for some. I lay in a typhoid ward
Learned failure, disappointments
In Star Trek, a kiss caused uproar
White on Black
The Cold War chilled the decade

The Iron Lady dominated the 70s
A desperate time of strikes
A wedded wife, I increased the birth statistics
Slippage. My hour glass figure changed to apple

In the 80s, a fairy-tale princess
Married her Prince Charming,
In love, (whatever love might be)
Aids stalked the world, a population thinner
The Berlin Wall came down
Tiananmen Square ran red
Salman Rushdie was targeted by a fatwah
I consciously uncoupled myself from marriage

The 90s saw genocide in Bosnia
Mad Cow disease
A sheep was cloned
Bill Clinton soiled his nest
Slippage…more wars, another clutch of wrinkles

Then came the millennium, with a media fanfare
The Twin Towers fell
A huge tsunami ravaged suffering Asia

Now, we live in interesting times
Brexit, Syria, global warming, drones
Ebola, cyber hacking, droughts
Huge population shifts, the clash of cultures
One son buried before me, in his prime

Slippage. Like an inexorable slag heap
The end game everyone plays slips further down