Never have I seen such a lost generation.
Never a generation so lost.
With all the means to know,
where they are, why they are, when they
are.
They don't know who they are,
where they are, why they are.
Such an absence of care for what's to
come.
Such an absence of care for who's to
become.
Such is the way of the teens I've
taught this year.
Apathy meaning an absence of path,
reluctance an absence of luck.
Following whoever's footsteps are
doomed.
Following whatever's the least useful
to them.
Smiling wryly at their own
purposelessness.
Smiling earnestly at others' failures.
Allurement of easy money and easy
pleasures
blinds them, leads them to
restlessness.
Never sadder nor happier than ever
before.
Never had so little interest in
themselves,
never had been so focused on their
selves.
So lost to reality and its codes.
Coding their own ethereal kingdoms.
So hopeful, so hopeless.
No dreams, no boundaries
in a world which forsook and
strengthened its frontiers.
Both prisoners and wardens of society.
Escapist strategies of the dominator
landing off-target rockets in the
landscape –
none ever beheld such avoided butchery.
But the worst, warded off by school
walls,
is yet to come.
When they will realise what's to come
when they will realise what's in for
them
when they will compute time and money
and add two and two and marvel
that it makes three, and not four,
never again, and smile wryly,
the unfairness of the world suddenly
made visible,
suddenly a constant, an exact
exfoliator of rest.
Yes, they will think back, and smile –
even then they knew, had feigned
ignorance,
had trudged on, secretly hoping for the
best.
