The Perils of Poetry Past

Somehow I revised and posted My Salty Cat without noticing the reference to Times Square as it was, long ago, and not at all as it is. The imagery of skin boils and amputees mixed in with tourists is just incomprehensible now. I could replace it, but with what? Surely there are bums still, and homeless people; you see them everywhere, especially as under the reign of Bloomberg the fascist vigilance of the Guiliani years has lifted, allowing derelicts (of which there are, in any event, far more), to once again camp out on the streets. But not in Disney’s Time’s Square, and so the city has lost its locus of sin. I am of course no longer a resident of the Imperium, just an occasional visitor. And this is not my first experience of being dated as a writer. Specimen Tank (my first novel), a near-future, dystopic Low Tech Noir, written in the late eighties, takes place over ten years ago. There are some howlers in there, such as DAT players. I just couldn’t imagine the iPod in 1987, or even in 1991, or even that CDs would be portable. On the other hand, an idiotic and vulgar president addressing the congress is old news to us, as are abandoned, haunted cities. Of course, New York is not one of them. Manhattan is the shining city on the Hudson. Everyone is happy there. The subways are full of clean, hard working people. Welcome to Milton Friedman Land. God Bless America.