A woman tells me I am the voice
of my generation
and I laugh.
My generation has no voice
and a thousand voices
at once, I tell her.
I tell her:
My generation did not have Woodstock.
We had the Persian Gulf
Baywatch Beach Party,
Pamela Anderson's manufactured breasts
bobbing in time to the drum `n' base
of Patriot missiles.
My generation had presidents who got into office
by taking hostages.
We had the cold war.
We grew up wearing coats,
fearing the color red.
We had glam rock.
We had new wave, growing old
in the eighties, the politics of dancing,
the alternative
of a shotgun to the head.
By the time we were born, dada
was dead. We were post post
modern kids cutting our teeth
on The Superfriends and Jolt Cola,
latch-key kids in a sugar rush
waiting for mom to pop a t.v. dinner
into the microwave.
My generation is so comfortable with the idea
of annihilation
that we nuke our food.
My generation jumps
from trend to trend, so new,
so retro.
Poetry, for my generation
was a two month fad
on MTV, the revolution televised,
homogenized, and satirized.
My generation is a conglomerate, corporate
marketing effort.
I am not the voice of my generation.
I am the voice of no one
but myself.
C. C. Russell
Wheatland, WY, USA
