Post Modern

Sometimes a poem can say it better than a song. No music to amplify or confuse things or suggest emotion where the writer was unable to suggest it himself -- only words, strung together, one stanza to the next. The dance leads to the kiss, but, like the best kisses, not without effort.

One of Plotnik's favorite poets just showed this one to us:

Post Modern

Come dance with me in the Belle Epoque

As we imagine it, with penicillin and anesthesia

and modern dental equipment and demerol,

without the shadow of the next century,

replete with its appalling slaughter of the innocents

in muddy trenches and frigid gulags, without the need

to avoid the clinical language we invent to tidy up

torture and mass murder in its many manifestations.

Just the sunlight in a carefree Renoir,

without the sentimental palette or the peculiar fondness

for wool and bustiers and corsets and too-tight shoes.

Just the champagne of the afternoon, and an aperitif

or two, and three courses of haute cuisine including

dessert, and this dance without our stumbling feet

or a story about the morning's cold rain or the sunset's

unbearable tristesse, just the love that does not question

how it feels if I sleep with your best friend, or, 

in these days of gender confusion, you do the same,

or if I lose my arm on the job, or we fail to make

December's rent - just you and me in this bubble outside

of history, where we exist for as long as a first kiss.

--- Will Walker