Tuesday, June 7, 2016

Robert Verdon, #166, A Sad Case of Elderly Nostalgia

cacti and aluminium plants flourish behind glass
Yarralumla Nursery in the sixties
optimistic times, and I was young,
no shrieking about ‛threats’
(except Communism,
but that wasn’t so bad)
it was all very much in the spirit of ‛fuck you’
no one was stupid enough
to leave it up to the ‛market’
and we grew, fairly well-nourished,
safe and warm in the winter sun
the petals of clouds fell
into my life, and only a little rain
and everything would be better tomorrow
*
now we are doomed, of course,
drawing our horns in all over the place,
like neurotic unicorns
shutting our flowers at midday
in case we go blind
frightened of our shadows
lest they be robotised and weaponised
by intellects beyond the understanding
of minds nurtured by scaremongering and commercial t.v.
any action will make things worse, and it's dark
don’t strike a match, it’s a powder magazine out there!
(probably can’t get a match anyway)
capitalism is confused with industrialism, the soufflé with the chef,
we might as well say our prayers, and our guru is David Attenborough.

6 comments:

  1. I enjoyed this a lot. I particularly like the neurotic unicorns....

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  2. nice one. I was just thinking about the 50's and the threat we felt then, with the Suez crisis etc. Is that nostalgia?

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  3. Ta — neurotic unicorns are everywhere!

    As far as the Suez thing is concerned, I suppose that's nostalgia of a sort! But I guess as a kid in the 60s, I didn't feel the same sense of threat (well, apart from the threat of nuclear annihilation, of course!).

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  4. Yes, once it was nuclear winter, now it's global warming. Both worth taking seriously, but I'm glad to have survived so long. (My childhood was in the forties.) *Wry grin* at your last line.

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    Replies
    1. I guess I'd just like to see a little optimism from time to time!

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  5. rotfl
    I'm a supplement taking unicorn :)

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