4 wonderwall in poetry

They say that the biggest tragedy in the world
is when a parent outlives his or her child.
I don’t doubt it.
I’m not a parent. But I can imagine.
Losing loved ones screwed me up at times in ways
I still can’t properly relate.
However.

Somewhere up there too, however
must be a similar loss for an entertainer or an artist.
It must be one hell of a thing when a creator outlives
the underpinning metaphors of their work.
When the symbol set you built your dreams upon
loses relevance, what’s the point of your work at all?

I think of movies I loved
with scenes in the forgotten things
called video stores.

I think of plays heart-wrenching
about the struggle with HIV/AIDS
in a world now
where if you're rich enough
it's no longer a death sentence
if you're rich enough
it's just like diabetes
just take a bunch of pills
and it's just a chronic bitch of an ailment
and in our culture of course
only the richest of people actually count
so all these beautiful plays
their meaning changed.

I wonder what the movies
with flying cars will mean
if we ever get flying cars.

I wonder what all those movies
and teevee shows built upon
mistimings or misunderstandings easily fixed by owning a cellphone
will mean when the people in cultural power
can't even imagine what it would be like
to not always have a cell phone.

Or whatever the next thing
after a cell phone is.

I wonder what my stories will be
without the context of me
I wonder without the context of my time
who I'll have been remembered to be.

I wonder.