anniversary of a coup 11-22-2019 by: carstie clausen

Fifty-six years ago today
The shots reverberated,
Reverb today
That fateful Friday morning of a Texas November
 Echo into my ears, hanging in a K.C. poolhall
 Where hustlers and streetboys gathered.
"The president has been shot!'
Early radio reports uncertain
Was there still hope?
Age twenty, intensely idealistic--political--
My suspicions keyed,
Tendrils of thought seeking, searching
Who pulled those triggers?
 Sensed it ran deep--the President:
 No cue in my hands, clueless too, I listened on,
 Standing there, awaiting later bulletins,
 Bullet-ins
 "This just in: President Kennedy declared dead."
Sunday morning in Topeka
Fade to a friend's foldaway couchbed, watching
Broadcast from Dallas police headquarters
"I'm a patsy" escorted down the corridor...
Plunging through cops, reporters, a hatted man
Thrusts his hand out...snubnose
BANG!
Live video etches through a lifetime's memories
From the hollow heart of Dallas P.D. security.
Seared-in image of Lee Harvey Oswald's murdered grimace
Concocted by subterranean schemers,
Cancels the patsy's day in court
...all tidied up, the key to the truth collapses on the concrete.