childhood past life, polio sister, measly brother, river blindness,
tetanus twitch, bookworm, hookworm, head louse, earthworm,
over-baked marshmallow, sunburned matchstick, the posh leech who
loved to feast on your ulcers, seven-year itch and whatnot, bliss it was
playing football in the downpour with those low income diseases
isn’t your generation the best
in an expanding universe, we must be falling more and more apart,
are you still a nightmare to your quarters, have you recovered from
your post-traumatic disorder, from being flogged, stripped naked and
tied up to the school flagpole for spoofing your national anthem,
from being jailed three years after being mistaken for a member of
diamond marble syndicate for your unhealthy lengthy hair, haven’t you
also got eight months extra for being caught red-eared, listening to
stones while stoned, you were a destructive element
your generation is the best
there was no income inequality in your days
everyone was in poverty trap
no capital flight, there was no capital
no brain drainage in the decolonizing sewage system
the server was never down, there was no server
student radicals wore war-paints, not business suits
men didn’t have to commit drunken suicides in ressentiment
they died young for a greater cause in the anti-imperialist struggle
women didn’t have to fight for their rights
they were always kept busy breastfeeding babies
the government never needed to justify its policies through
pro-government policy think-tanks to appease the west
the state was really really prescient
poor prostitutes were routinely rounded up, rich ones were
known as concubines or kept ladies, karaoke bars and korean soap-star
lookalikes were not rampant, race riots were routine, heroin addicts were
given harsh jail terms with hard labour in chained gang, drug kingpins
returning to the legal fold became philanthropists, the kgb antennae and the
tendrils of local spies entangled, the cia’s weren’t everywhere,
brussels wasn’t a bloc, washington wasn’t a consensus
your generation is the best
when you were a tad, you said, the air was cleaner, jungles were greener,
you could drink from any river, mountains were still wholesome blocks of
unspoiled and un-mined soil, if you didn’t like the government party, you could
always become a maoist rebel, or be labelled a pro-american felling axe, things
were black and white, visions were never blurred,
reality didn’t have to be augmented
you imagine, your composers, if their imaginations weren’t confined
in diatonic harmonic hierarchy, would belittle a thousand john cages,
your poets, if they were not politically castrated, would drown a thousand
ron sillimans in their tears, your painters, if their canvases were not narrowly
framed for the shortage of canvas and paint, would make a thousand andy
warhols burn their life’s work in shame, your film makers, if their visions
were not reduced to moscow montage, would bring a thousand
woody allens to their knees…
and you yourself, if and only if…
yes…yes…yes…i dig you…stop weeping…
my generation is the best
ko ko thett
Illustration Nick Victor