We should have seen it in the eighties
// Poetry //
November 2019
I was born in 79
on the brink between generation X and Y
Between whatever and why
so somehow, I feel innocent.
It's not my fault.
Firstly, I was too young,
and secondly
my apathy is not my own:
it is a trait of my generation.
But anyway, I feel
that we should have seen it in the eighties.
We should have seen it in the eighties.
When they leveled the forests
with asphalt and parking lots.
When they erected malls
and sucked the life out of the cities.
When it became normal to have more televisions
and cars
in one family.
When Chernobyl exploded and sent
threatening clouds over Europe.
When they brought strangers to the country
to maintain our lifestyle
without having enough housing
so the young people had to walk the streets
and occupy abandoned warehouses.
We should have seen it in the eighties
That growth led us out of the road
to nowhere
We were even warned by David Byrne and Talking Heads
who sang about the same road
and about nothing but flowers.
But our eyes were fixed on MTV
and on everything American.
Betamax
blockbusters
and headfirst liberalism.
In Denmark, my generation has been called the discount generation.
Because we were born when all the discount stores were built.
And we grew up eating discount food
And carried our groceries home in discount bags
And bought our necessities at discount prices
and lived our discount lives
in discount houses
in pastel colors
while we were smiling
windy wide smiles
with government-funded braces
and with the political concerns swept away
under the living room rugs.
We should have seen it in the eighties.
When the yuppies took over for the hippies
and made sure that everything became a race.
As if life was about being the first to reach
nowhere.
There were price races
on the groceries
while price and quality galloped towards zero
faster than you could say agricultural aid.
And there were career races
against the curved floors of the director's corridors
and toward a life in speedboats
vacations in Spain
and champagne enough
to drown yourself.
And there were family races
to deliver the children early enough in kindergartens
and pass the red light
before the neighbor
in the residential neighborhoods
which were built to inhabit.
But not to live in.
We should have seen it in the eighties
But now we’re here
And we are being shouted at,
by a younger generation
and its spokes girl from Sweden.
Who threatens us:
that the eyes of all future generations are upon us.
And she asks:
"How dare you?"
And as Hunter S. Thomson in sixty-eight
I also remain disillusioned.
And I’m looking out at the tide pole
taking note of the mark,
where the wave of the eighties broke
and all the wrapping paper from the luxury goods
came rushing back upon us
as a regular
pole melting
ocean rising
biblical flood
Long ago, we should have seen
That the shadow of the eighties
and decades of carefree abundance,
exploitation of the Third World
and predatory utilization of natures resources
would come back
in the same way as Bruce Willis
always comes back in a Die Hard movie:
with a vengeance.
Revenge-bearing, ultraviolent
and without any regard to life.
But we are still Homo Pastelius
And we still do as we did in the eighties.
we hide
sweep away
and shroud
the truth behind concepts.
We call it terror,
and mass immigration
and refugees
and natural disasters.
and forget
that we knew it all along.
The colors were too vivid
too bright and too clear
the scents too pure
and the flavors too tasty.
It was all a dream.
And though I formally belong to generation X,
and therefore, should not care,
there are just enough generation Y in me
to ask
Why?
Why don't we wake up?