Artist’s Statement: “Under A Man Made Sun” is the second in a series of four videopoems Called “The Vista Poems.” This one is intended to represent something almost kitschy & nostalgic. Collectively, the four poems are perspectives on the way we view the past and how it collides with our future. The first of the vista videopoems is “Challenge Me Vista.” It can be found here.

Under a man made sun

the past

condescends to reach the stars,

and I watched

like I was buttering a biscuit.

Knowing we were born for this,

the bigger better thing,

a generation that came fully loaded,

nothing due at signing,

complete with childhood memories

they sat on the hood of a Dodge.

From the days of dirt roads

and analog,

homemade christmas cards

and rabbit-ears

from scratching, popping vinyl boys and girls,

how did we become

a digital age?

In the beginning

there were Nicotine stained walls

and hillbilly playboys,

there were tin can pony tabs,

blue eye shadow.

Hot rods with bucket seats

they’d fill up with

the local beauty queen,

then take their smiles

screaming down main street

with a cigarette hung out to dry,

and  sing along

to a heartbeat,

and think, someone else finally gets it;

a better life

that was just bound to happen.

As I grew they told me I was part of

a something for nothing generation,

we had deep fat fried futures

with a side of sugar drink.

We would dream in pixels

and pan tones,

we’d wear our thoughts and opinions

on t-shirts and bumper-stickers.

We soaked our tongues

in sarcasm

and fantasized of barbecue chips

and vaulted ceilings,

somehow we became the present

and the future,

and a collective soul strived to slumber,

after all we were the generation

they built to dream,

and we watched the world shrink into a thump,

a slowed heartbeat,

until shut-eye.

© 2012 R.W. Perkins. All rights reserved.