What the elders saw

I must be mad to be turned on like this. This is another fine mess you've gotten me into, poot, listening to the kids at work, at play, whatever, making these sounds, trance-like, masturbatory, unearned, naive, primitive, childish, poignant, inevitable, honest, these kids and their music, dangling earphone music, just for tonight darling let's get lost, bareback, constipated, alien, fungal, theatrical, licentious, indiscriminate, fleeting, low-risk, these kids staring into the well of Narcissus, this is their psalmody, between boyfriends and girlfriends, their flame is its own reflection, liturgical, cemented, boring, hopeful, unschooled, informed, demented, deformed, surgical, these kids educated beyond their emotional intelligence, in way over their heads, hungry, pale, tentative, young, insatiable, scared, scarred, indestructible, happy and sad at the same time, as the sages foresaw, just like us, then and now.

My friend A. says, "Their world is exactly as they describe it in their music. They're trying to come to grips with the hand they've been dealt, the fact that beauty is momentary in the mind, as the poet said. Who are we to question its aching immortality?"