I

The arcadian past is dead.
Perhaps it never was.

On one hand a golden vision
Of gallant and splendid men.
Cobblestone dreams,
A rustic thirst,
Renaissance, invention,
A proper bow and curtsy.
The Paradise Garden and
The hedgerows of old-
Glint in the eye of the nostalgist.
Our forebears
And the open heath.
Idyllic.
Would that it still were.

On the other a practical frivolity.
Spoiled milk and discarded scraps,
Leftovers thrown out.
A forsaken time
Of blood roar and cannon,
Disease and fetid stink,
Myth and choking smoke.
Avaricious heads
Atop pauper bodies.
Ancient tombs
Built of Hebrew tears.
****** sacrifice
To hideous and foreign gods.
Barbaric.
Finally, it is no longer.


II

We, being young,
The ungrateful and resentful,
The unabashedly alien-
We are the new now.
We turned away from the trappings of
The teachings of the wise.
We sneered when those dotards
Taught us their language,
Their rules,
Their type.
We laughed when
They corrected us,
Told us not to say that.
We detached from the decrepit womb,
Formed as their inverse,
Reflecting their faces
While defying their antique sensibilities.
We grew of our own volition,
Created our own language,
Etched our own runes,
And,
Ultimately,
Shared with them
Their very graves.


III

I, being young,
And of the here,
And now,
Have been elected
Into something
So much more
Than contemporary,
Than modern,
Something so inherently
Now.
I have been gloriously birthed
Into this open present,
This wonder of
Internet
And knowledge.
The exertions of our fathers and
Our mothers' cyclical toils
Have built such a steadfast bridge
Upon which the constant contrivances
Of our Now
Race around in dynamism.
Aware of my place
In this successive age,
I fervently embrace
Our Now,
Not to reject the past,
Never,
But to nurture its nascent chapter.

                    -c. c. Condry

The way the words looked in midair,
And hung.
The way that “hate” seemed red
And rose with heat.
The way my “why” seemed illusory- so elusive and smoke.
A frail and blue shell withering.
The way that one word,
Hate-
Its proud, vulcan power,
Made me think back.
To when I'd see a perfect “love” every night,
An innocent-pink-cloud apparition.
To when a rare and welcome “proud” would appear
And glow a chaste yellow.
To even when “right” and “wrong” were far off,
Dull, matte, brown things.
And “play” and “plenty” seemed all too ready
And stretched out like a green-grass field
Beneath my feet.
Still-
The way the words looked in midair-
I could only see red.

                    -c. c. Condry

I wonder:

Do the empty places, the ones where we once stood- do they miss us?

Do the void and vacant hollows weep to feel only air
Where once our warmth kept full and fair?

Do they miss the blood that once floated in their space,
Wild on a ride through little tubules?

Do they lament themselves, so alone without cloth and flesh?

Do they think back to every thought that we once thinked?
Recalling fondly our aspirations and fragile machinations,
Our likes and loves, our dreary distrust,
All the rainbow and myriad of how's and why's
That race around behind our eyes?

No, I think that space is fine
With all the bliss of empty time.

People come and people go,
Space just is. Space won't know.

                    -c. c. Condry

We're young.
God we're young.
We're young and rebels all.
Rebels with every cause and to every glorious effect.
We melt the sun away,
And howl at the moon.
We carry our dreams in our jeans,
Our heads in our hearts.
Screams soaked in ocean surf-
The highest highs and lowest lows as but tide on our toes.
The ******* always behind us,
The big bang always ahead.
We cut the chains of a criminal cage,
Search for the red in our veins.
In all of us a personal summer,
Pushed by fear of future winters.
A timeless truth over a thousand permutations,
A thousand generations, a thousand germinations:
We are.
We are fires in the night, stars in a sublunary sky.
We are mutable gases born by open wind,
We are illumination, awakening, engendering.
We seek the world and spurn the rest.
We are young.
God we're young.

                    -c. c. Condry

The sun is up.
And time is woke.
All the busy flurry floating,
All the hurry, headied hosts,
All the sky and Earth and travels,
All the thoughts through head that go,
Every patient, perfect person,
Every war and cruel joke,
Every laugh and feeling smile,
Every dream and distant hope,
All are covered in your shadow-
Science Mother, thinking most.

                    -c. c. Condry