jetpack blues in poetry

everything you grew up
with felt like things that always were
and always will be
we have video phones now
it’s called Skype
it’s weird
we got video phones exactly
but because it’s just an integrated computer app
it doesn’t feel like magic
because it’s not a neon booth built into our homes
it doesn’t feel like the future at all
the future changed when we got there
split town
said it was just going out for smokes
totally bailed on us for good
disappeared
left no forwarding address
and here we are now

the future was two years ago
what do we do now?
we could have flying cars
at this point the technology is there
we’re just too cheap
we’re just too lazy
we want the next type of iPhone more
we could be living on the Moon at this point
we could be landing on Mars tomorrow
but we want Virtual Reality goggles for video games more
the dollars have spoken
three-dee googles for ogling anime girls are more profitable
than walking on Mars
world peace doesn’t pin the needle on the popular opinion
the way flavouring everything like bacon or like pumpkin spice
that’s just how it is
that’s the score
the future would have been awesome
but it wasn’t cheap enough
and here we are

hunter gatherers spent their whole lives
as hunter gatherers and
assumed that it was always like that
it was always gonna be like that
there’s always been cars when I was around
so it feels like there always was cars
someday we’ll have rocket packs
and for people born in that time
it’ll always seem just so
I had an elderly neighbor
who refused to believe we’d been on the moon
because he held his hand up in the sky
and said
“how could a man walk on the moon?”
“it’s too small to walk on that”
and I wonder

what I will I be misunderstanding
if I get around to being old
what am I misunderstanding now
because I wasn’t born into it
what is my moon
that I will never understand
because it just looks so small
to me
what’s yours?
what will you never be able to fathom?

no matter what happens
no matter how screwed up
or glorious
it gets
it will always be normal to someone
it will always be boring for the kids
the future will come true
in ways we’ll never quite be able to predict
and someone will always come along
to not understand it
and someone else to find it
crushingly dull

if we don’t burn ourselves out
there could be a child
living on the moon
and be totally
goddamned over it

I salute you, bored kid
I hope we get you there
and I hope we get to the point
where you too are amazed
and see things that are incomprehensible
to some boring kid from the boring old moon
up there all small