Random Poetry

A Sense of After

In the books I'm reading,
and the books I've read,
and the shows and movies I've seen,
there's this sense of...
   what was, what existed, what used to be
A time before.

In a lot of these stories and shows--stories in their own right--
there seem to be wonders that don't exist anymore,
times that will never be seen,
planets lost and known only to the inhabitants
or inhabitant left
the stories there left unknown lost
constellations unknowable.

There's this sense of loss,
of what could've been instead of what could be
as though we are walking in the great unknown
or the horror everyone feared or never could've anticipated...
if they're lying to themselves... or simply ignorant.
You can't forget ignorance.
Everyone is.

There's this sense of a loss of wonder or peace,
of joy and happy days and relaxation,
that those days will never be had again.
...
it's the old eighties movies that get to me most.
The ones about how amazing the eighties are--
or the seventies, or the nineties, for that matter.
As though those are the good old days and these are the shit ones.
... and yet, history's complicated,
it's not as simple as good or bad days,
no matter how much I want to say those were the shit ones,
the past was shit, leave it there

...
we can't just leave it there.
we still have things to learn,
it is not entirely gone, yet.
If it will ever be entirely gone at all.

The good and the bad mix together,
and the neutral's there, too, amongst them,
in between, moments in coffee shops and bedrooms,
late nights spent saying prayers or enjoying stories,
nights spent amongst lovers or sisters, mornings with care or survival,
a day like any other.

There's this sense of After, in stories.
A longong for what was lost or the past
that I don't quite understand.
But I do get the sense of walking in the unknown,
every year is new to me and more surprising than the last.
We are walking in the after, it feels like, because of those movies,
but this is the now,
      I wonder what comes after.