The Fall of Camelot

The Fall of Camelot

There once was a time our nation has now forgot,
when American’s stood proud and shining bright.
It later was christened as an American Camelot.
A time when our nation shimmered with light.

An Irish Lad from Boston rose like a shooting star
Became President, led us to the might of right.
We knew it more when we lost this young tar,
Our shining day had become an awful night.

A single bullet, fired in Dallas at Dealy Square
shattered the dreams of a hopeful nation.
No one knew how we should prepare
we but knew we had lost a generation.

A lone assassin or a careful plot carried out,
It didn’t really matter what had caused the fall.
For we knew that it really mattered not,
Nothing would remedy the tragedy of it all.

A Nation alive, alive in light and thunder,
as proud of each other as we could be
and now we were torn forever asunder
By men of purpose we could not see.

Later in the 60’s they shot a few more,
Martin and Bobby, a loss of wonder,
two more of our leaders dead on the floor
and a nation again felt torn asunder.

After that, we never trusted again.
we knew that something had gone awry.
and knew there had fallen three great men
Our nation expelled a heartfelt sigh.

Men and women in public wept
wracked with anguish and fear
It affected us, we wounded crept
a nation shattered, our course unclear.

Never again did we blindly trust
those slick lipped pols of yore
for they smelled of compliant must
of the blood and shared young gore.

Martin and Bobby and John
Three stars shining in the firmament
They left us in sad abandon
their sun no longer the day met.

For it was once a cause, that we firmly met
an idealism which hoped and dreamed
A people united and ready to set
an agenda that idealistically beamed.

At one time we were proud to be,
Americans, all of us every one.
And now we wondered meekly
If we would ever again see the sun.

Camelot, Camelot it is a wispy dream.
Of knights and ladies and chivalry
of a nations hopes, now a mournful scream
now faced with an ugly and empty reality.

It’s not true that dreams don’t matter
Or nations can only hope to be good.
For it’s individual men that ideas scatter
and manifest evil that must be withstood.

I say this now to hopefully inform
those younger and claiming not to know
That a nation’s hope is a thirsting norm
which we all have the right to bestow.

America once stood tall and proud
A nation with shining moral code
That blared her trumpets loud
and offered one hope to bode

There once was a time that mattered
of shining promise in nationhood
and now it lays forever spattered
in a young man’s untimely spilt blood.

Camelot, Camelot, where are you now?
For it is hard for a nation to remember
The promise of a generation’s shining brow
as we reach now a time of our December

What we learn from this, I do not know
except that we are men and women alone.
And we have but to seek ideas for us to grow
Away from that deadly mournful drone.

Dream, dream of all that may yet come,
For it is only you that can make it occur,
The idea of a collective, thoughtful sum
That can erase a painful historical slur.

Camelot, Camelot, where are you now?
We wonder what might and could have been,
had the shooter from Dallas known not how
nor the festering evil wasted these men.

Light the lamp, burn it bright and hot,
A national flame for all to remember
That there once was a time like Camelot
Before the flame withers to forgotten ember