Loss

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.