After All: A Sestina D' 80s

Dance was our religion, our meat and our metaphor.

We thought we'd live forever and die tomorrow.

Our day didn't begin until after the 11 o'clock news.

We sprinkled cocaine on our cornflakes. After all

It was the 80s.

It was the 80s.

No one believed in Love. The Free Love

of our parents' generation dined and dashed after all,

sticking us with the check. AIDS arrived without the bowtie of metaphor.

Everything good will kill you. This is not news.

Drink. Dance. Now. No one believed in tomorrow.

We believed in dance. In now. In trust no one. Tomorrow

would take care of/nuke itself. It's enough to survive today. The 80s:

It was a Deadman's Party, we picnicked in the shade of new

mushroom clouds and fed the ants of cynicism. Love

was a metaphor for chaos, for unified destruction; a metaphor

for shared despair -ala Sid and Nancy. I love you, now dance! After all

what else is there? Dance in the streets! There's panic in the disco. After all

someone's hanged the DJ. There'll be another DJ tomorrow.

And another. While Rome burns. Still is burning. This is not a metaphor.

The skies are black, smoky with self-immolation. Before the 80s

someone lit fires that burn like oil fields. How can we sleep? How can we love

while our beds are burning? There is fire in our blood. This is not news.

No one watched the news. Or believed it. The news was for suckers

who believed in presidents, pensions and honest elections. After all

we'd seen flower children (through the magical power of Peace, Love,

LSD and Capitalism) bloom into CEOs and Swiss banking gnomes. Tomorrow

would bring more of the same. Devolving from whisper to scream. In the 80s

music and hair styles were loud, jagged, defiant favored metaphor.

We were beautiful. Bathed in irony and barbed wire. No metaphor intended.

Emo kids, you never understood us. You charge all your torn jeans (now sold new)

to Mom's credit card but you learn nothing from your faux 80s

fashions. The real thing is buried at the back of Mom's closet after all.

Workman's boots mended with duct tape. If you told Mom 20 yrs ago where tomorrow

would bring her, she'd have stabbed you both. Which doesn't mean she doesn't love you.

It was the 80s. You can't hope to understand. We were young and hopelessly in love

with ourselves after all. We were hungry, angry, bereft -really and metaphorically.

Much sinning and much sinned against. We were something new. We were yesterday's tomorrow.