Age of Chronic Luxury

The visuals. The visuals.
They all come quick.
A life of Visuals,
quick, quick, quick.
Incomplete as memory fades.
Always the taste and
the draw for more.

I suppose the
Chev-Ro-Lay
in Black and White,
a commercial
and Dina Saur - we
called her that - tee hee hee,
framed a magic moment,
boomer kids seemed to have
all the rag tag makings,
potential glory of a new
rich golden age.

Instead as it all turned out
it became a burb age,
a bubble age, a mindless
consuming age and
compared to the rest
of an unaware humanity -
we, the many, lived the good life
the high life - for a short time
in the America of
domestic tranquility.

It was a coming age, full of
promise, progress, a golden time,
an age yet to be sorted out.
Global awareness was only
in books in college bookstores.
And issues like race, sex, sexuality
had yet to struggle, come of age.
It was an age of chaos - the good
parts are yet to survive and lead us
elsewhere - but by and large and
for most of us it was an unprecedented
Age of Chronic Luxury.

Nothing in history
to compare with it - nothing
to compare it to -
the might of Detroit
and a Maytag
washing machine
and "Queen for a Day"
on the tube.
The decades on from the fifties
were sweet though in retrospect
in-complete. Those years had glamour
and simple sight - but little or
no long lasting soul.

The visuals in the beginning of
that age had a few companions,
radio, hi-fidelity, stereo
and not one but many local
daily hard copy news-papers.
When the age ended
with a crash so to speak, a muted thud,
only the noise and chatter,
cacophonic clatter dulled
virtual, not real, reality
- cable, e-pod, e-mail, mobile cell phones,
PCs, the Internet, tweeter -
as disinterested witness to it all.

A Tower of Babel reborn? Retorn with
a new dark age of chaos to follow?

The great charade of the big war,
Vietnam - some growing years,
and the estimated body counts -
we always won - we never lost a...
Mission statement to keep the anthill
threat of S.E. Asia over
there - it boosted GM stock.

"What's good for GM is (was) good
for America" then. Or at least that
is what the Wall Street mantra then spake.
A national treasury of gold, ideas, youth
- a whole generation wasted, misled,
misdirected - doped - spun - eventually
onto a pagan altar of deregulation
and temporary titanic paper profit?

(That and a moon walk to represent that
early decade or so. Anybody lately drink the
scientific wonder of that age? Tang!)

Fast forward, those other years to
the modern day - and in between (?)
Work. Work. Work.
Marriage, a mortgage, kids.
401(K) - retirement?

Where did all those golden
Boomer days go?
Who counts?
Upon reflection in a glass
or into a trash filled lake,
why does the rest of the
planet want beef
plastic credit and
power muscle cars?
Silly question silly fool.

And as the recent age of
chronic luxury collapses (here)
what is the legacy best? Left?
Shouting - argumentum
ad hominem - ad nasueum.
Hate Radio. Hate News.
Death to my domestic enemy!
My bubble world is superior
to yourrr bubble world!!!
(on a dying planet)

Whatever happened to God?
Is he retired - living in Vegas?

Where has the Republic gone?
The upper half (10%) of an
economy struggles to recover.
The bottom 90% is lost forever
in fifth world bliss
amidst empty factories and
empty office towers (for sale - cheap!).
It's the new economics -
Broken promises - unfulfilled dreams.
Plastic card idols and
the pursuit of fantasy
-the illusion or was it delusion
of a common man's world -
could not last - a temporary
half century long Camelot?

Lost. So many things amidst
the fading echo
and fading visuals - of time gone-
not properly managed
an unsustainable age
that no one questioned
this passing age
of chronic luxury.

What next?