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@janpsolivagant.bsky.social Sep 13, 2026, 5:40 PM

Thanks @emteepoetry.bsky.social for last week's excellent prompt!

This week's #PromptCombo is #The90s

Use hashtags & tag @janpsolivagant.bsky.social to take part

Currently en route - will catch up!

#poetrycommunity #GenX #80s #90s #ColdWar #TheBomb #RaveCulture #RiteOfSpring #Stravinsky #Bez

Rite of Spring II –
End of History

Unforeseen
Redemption of the
Pledge broken after
Pražské jaro - the
Rite of Prague Spring.

Gen-X urbex vanguard now
Probes the freshly-breached
No Man’s Land of the Cold War;
Scouts the bohemian outposts of a
Siberia deemed vanquished in
Prenzlauer Berg and Kraków -

The End of History
Convulsed by
Haman’s Rape of Kuwait, his
Poison-tipped scuds
Primed and pointed at
The Holy Land.

As
Teens, mounted dispatchers from
Armageddon’s Badlands would
Stalk their nightmares:
Dream-censor admitting only the
Terrifying wait before the
Three-Minute Warning -
Never the firestorm, poison rains or
Unending solar eclipse of the
Aftermath.

Now they dance - in
Disused hangars, warehouses,
Husks of factories, cotton mills:
Devastation wrought not by
Bombs, but by GATT,
Knowledge economies in utero, and a
Ten-year crusade against the unions.

Now they dance -
Enacting the Rite of Spring’s
Tableaux from eighty years ago:

Roerich’s peasant smocks echoed in
Lurid, baggy fashions;
Crashing, snarling beats and drones;

MDMA-tinged bacchanalia fusing the
Tribes of Neo-Mod, Rude Boy,
Indie Girl and Crusty Juggler;

Frenetic shadows – cut adrift from
Nijinsky’s original castings;

Elders scoping the heavens with that
Lost, abstracted look – not unlike
Bez from the Happy Mondays when
Shorn of his maracas.

Ecstatic Dance-to-the-Death, but
No Chosen One propitiates the
Spirit of the Earth.

Death by Water, but not in the
Raven coils of the Rusalka,

Nor by
Ducking stool,

Nor as live offering to
Chaac in a Mayan sinkhole . . .

Intoxication: a
Lucozade-and-water-laced
Misadventure.

© Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025

Bez of the Happy Mondays in his early-'90s pompt with signature maracas which, if they weren't silent, probably held his secret cache of disco biscuits! :D

Roerich-designed costumes from the Nijinsky ballet version of Stravinsky's Le sacre du printemps (Rite of Spring)

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