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Thursday, May 02, 2019

The 1993 Balloon

In 1993, I was
an optimistic, naive balloon,
filled with helium hope
but leavened with
trepidation.

The capital O
outrageousness of
Maury, Jerry, Ricki and Geraldo
now seem quaint,
even puzzling.

We shared
anonymous germs
in Superman’s
ubiquitous changing rooms
because there were
no cell phones,
and even then,
Superman
was merely
a human actor
in garish tights,
before CGI technology
made him
Super indeed.

There was no
user-friendly internet,
to capitalize on human
avarice and desire,
before the days
of monetization,
before it became a
privacy-sucking machine.

Streaming existed in
air waves,
radio waves,
television waves,
media resistant to ownership.

One merely talked
to another.
No email,
no text,
no IM,
no DM.
The impersonality
of the beeper
should have been
a warning.

Before
Everything
became customizable,
we learned to adapt
to the things we
couldn’t change,
and when each of us
endured it,
we had a shared
common experience.

I recall it
as a time
of dreamy possibility,
less splintered,
simpler and slower,
and looking back,
my heart
sighs in unexpected
yearning.

6 comments:

  1. This is brilliant. I completely agree with it all. I'm definitely thirsty for a return to the early '90s.

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  2. Nice lines: "The impersonality
    of the beeper
    should have been
    a warning." and "helium hope".

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  3. Looking back things look different, melancholy mood making...

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  4. This line resonates with me:
    “The impersonality
    of the beeper
    should have been
    a warning.”
    Those were simpler times indeed.

    Might you put a link to dVerse here so others can find our prompts? Perhaps I’m just not seeing it? I know you’ve posted at dversepoets.com before....so you understand the importance of putting the tag or link here so others will be drawn to the pub and you’ll possibly have more readers then as well.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I did have email before that... but definitely no updates of streaming... I got my first email account in 1986 or something.

    ReplyDelete