Blue Hair And All - For Rosa Seyah

They were hurrying along in their granny tennies, in a crowd - a mob, really -

these pink and blue and silver-haired fanatics

with their brooms and mops.

They had descended on the nation's capitol in hordes,

all with their aprons and sponges and buckets and other paraphernalia

of mature workaday femininity,

and they were intent on cleaning out the mess

in the Pentagon that had led to the idiocy of pursuing yet another war.

One startling old lady had begun the whole thing,

sending out articles via her blogsite, "Amazing Gracie."

Gracie was her name, and janitorial pursuits were her game,

and she managed to stir up a hornet's nest of elderly womankind

with her fiery words of love for her soldier great-grandson

who had been hauled back to the MidEast consumer wars

by a government insisting that he was required to be "stop-loss,"

something like a finger in a leaky dike or some such garbage.

What he was, was depressed and ashamed and terrified and half crazy

and unwilling to kill any more and at the same time unable to say that final no

to the bosses, the whaddayou call them, the ones who profit from the dead.

So that young man went,

and his Granny Gracie flipped out.

Before long her blog had audio and she could preach!

She was one of those screeching preachers - Well, I exaggerate -

she was a very effective preacher with a high singing voice

who re-wrote hymns into protest songs,

and got angry grannies singing and thinking up mischief

all over the country.

Hell, she had them writing in from all across the planet.

And before you knew it, she had another brainstorm,

and she had accomplices,

and they set a time and a place and it was high  noon in Washington D.C.,

and then there they were with their brooms and mops

going after the Congress and Senate and Pentagon and White House.

She's in "protective custody" now.

They all are -

and D.C. will never be the same.

Because there are all these people gathering and singing her recycled hymns,

and someone got her grandson on the phone

and he's on the loudspeaker now - that is, they keep playing the recording,

because he got shot up yesterday and will not be talking again in this life...

People are picking up on Granny Gracie's energy all over the planet,

and all these older folks are cooking up new protests in her honor,

and the cops don't really know what to do about them.

They're old folks, for heavens' sakes.

They're old people.

Here's to Granny Gracie.

Amazing.