By Keith Welch
The Future Ain’t What it Used to Be. –Yogi Berra
We were promised flying cars,
and condos on the moon, even
racial equality: all those great sci-fi gags.
Those were the glory days,
the Future. Everything polished
smooth and covered in chrome.
In the fifties, we had the scent
of unlimited progress in our
exceptional American nostrils—
the Future marched forward,
smelling of plutonium and plastic,
with just a hint of napalm. The Future
chanted loudly as it came on.
Then the sixties were assassinated
and we got the hard word,
written in blood: that much
optimism might be overly optimistic.
Welcome to the future, where flying
cars remain scarce, the moon remains
distant, and we have all the equality
our police will allow.
Keith Welch lives in Bloomington, Indiana where he works at the Indiana University Herman B Wells library. He has no MFA. He has poems published in The Tipton Poetry Journal, Open: Journal of Arts & Letters, Dime Show Review, and Literary Orphans, among others. He enjoys complicated board games, baking, talking to his cat, Alice C. Toklas, and meeting other poets. His website is keithwelchpoetry.com. On Twitter: @TheBloomington1.
Image Credit, “Modern Kitchen” by Mike Licht.
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