‘70s Poem

O those ‘70s relationships, which I so believe in -
the American ones
that Carole King sings about or John Updike rhapsodizes,
which I believe in far more than, say,
my parents’ marriage (begun mid-‘60s):
which almost convince me that my own relationships
aren’t real relationships.
I am dressed wrong. If I looked
a little more like I’d just stepped off the cover
of Lou Reed’s Berlin
then maybe I could credit myself with emotional existence.
But, as it is, I need to rent The Ice Storm on video -
get some kind of by-proxy
confused, divorce-bound, gender-questioning, yes, sexy
life-detail. Take notes.
(At this point I should perhaps mention Abba, the penisaurus,
shiny eye-makeup, Scholl sandals.)
How do they feel - the real-relationship-havers, not my parents -
looking back,
now addicted to whatever fun they impulsively chose
in 1972?
With a wardrobe full
of semi-embarrassment. (But those clothes! -
velvet, satin, fur, silk. Clothes
you want to feel touching you.
Not the fatigued army of the Nonentity ‘90s.)
How does it appear to them? Heroes and heroines
of proper dysfunction.
Innovators of the first perfect modern fuck-up. Codifiers
of crisis.
Our founding fathers and mothers,
and stepmothers and stepfathers.
How do they feel, if they hear me, hearing me
speak like this?
Say, if I’d been there, I wouldn’t want to have been there.
Any impossible choices like that
are weekend questions for historians.
And what we’re talking about, man, is an unwriteable age.
You have to feel it: the ache of lack.
I guess they’d be disappointed
at my own lack of original disappointments.
But, if they got round to expressing this,
which no doubt they would,
their language would embarrass me.
That’s not something I can live with, now, after -
at the time,
it was its’ own Revelation: Analysis, Maoism,
Feminism, dog-end Sixties Idealism
(meaning, and temporarily removing from meaning, Love).
Now, it has degenerated into
an occasional drive two miles out of the way
to the health food shop.
Into a large corporation that cares slightly more
for its staff than the next large corporation.
Into, at worst, a generation whose greatest skill
and final achievement
is rolling perfect joints whilst utterly stoned.