1776 Versus John Adams/Boogie Nights Versus American Hustle

Ben Nardolili

How many levels of nostalgia are you on?

I know, counting seems to take the fun out of it,

Yet, there are limits and there are levels,

Again, how high and how wide

Is your painful longing for the past right now?

I can tell you, I’ve got several myself,

There’s the desire to go back to childhood, sure,

We all feel that from time to time,

Watching the old cartoons, playing with the old toys,

And not worrying about the weight of the world

On top of that? There’s my old views

Of the past that came long before I was born,

The way I looked to Ancient Greece

When I was young and still growing in college,

And how the 1970s felt back in the late bland 1990s

Then there’s the way the 1970s portrayed

The Age of Enlightenment and Napoleon,

Something deliciously rich, a whole sensual era

Of frills and fans, long, colorful coats,

And canes loudly making their emphasis on stones

Today we don’t portray the past the same way,

Everything is full of mud and manure, and too sharp,

With high definition everything,

There’s no sense of stature, or choreography,

Whether it’s glories or crimes depicted

What does this change say about how we live today,

The way we look while we’re looking back?

Are we losing our focus while moving too fast?

And if you think it’s progress,

Then how many levels of ideology are you on?

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Ben Nardolilli is a MFA candidate at Long Island University, and a history graduate of New York University. His work has appeared in Perigee Magazine, Door Is a Jar, The Delmarva Review, Red Fez, The Oklahoma Review, Quail Bell Magazine, and Slab. Follow his publishing journey at mirrorsponge.blogspot.com.