When you were tiny, raw, and new, you couldn’t clench your fist in rage;
You couldn’t talk, you couldn’t chew, you couldn’t step out of your cage.
As you grew, you knew nothing but warmth, and love, and care, spreading flour on the floor
And taking lone rides in elevators, up fifty floors to find the sky.
Back then, a lending hand provided your greedy little mouth with a shiny, silver spoon that,
As if by magic, replenished itself;
A glistening, silver spoon, that has fed you right from the brief, flickering moment in which
You came into existence, and will continue to do so, until it decides,
It is time.
And what will you do, when that time comes?
Will you be ready? Maybe.
Maybe you’ll read, and think, and write, and paint.
Maybe you’ll talk, and mean every single syllable,
Both for yourself and for those without a voice.
Maybe you’ll clench your fists at injustice,
Maybe you’ll actually put words into action,
To help improve someone else’s life, and mean it.
Maybe.
But then again, you are just another member of a generation that doesn’t seem to care,
A generation that doesn’t seem to know anything about anything, unless it can be found in an
electronic box that attaches through an umbilical cord to their brains;
A generation that wants everything and more, here, and now.
So maybe you’ll be consumed, by greed, and lust, and selfishness.
Maybe you’ll be consumed, by the darkness that creeps,
Slowly but surely, through greasy flesh and crunching bones;
The darkness that comes to all of those who have stopped searching,
All who live for cars, and credit, and clothes,
And aimless fun, and nights they won’t remember,
With people they want to forget.
All who live for pointless jokes and truthless, thoughtless, words
In conversation with false, fraudulent friends that wait for you to fall.
Perhaps you’ll become one of many, part of the flock,
With so much space between your ears you almost float.
Perhaps, you’ll be a brainless lamb that has no thought,
Other than what everyone else thinks,
That has no wants,
Other than what everyone else wants,
A lamb that stares, unmoving, at fast, flashing, fluorescent lights on screens,
And swallows everything.
Maybe one day you’ll look at the boats coming and think no, no more, no room, no money.
Maybe you’ll have forgotten that you’re only here by a small twist of fate.
Maybe you’ll have forgotten that stability is no excuse for greed,
Maybe you won’t remember that there is no excuse for ignorance,
And that politicians with vision come every twenty years, not two,
And that God died a long, long time ago.
Maybe you won’t remember that you have a choice.
A choice in what to see and hear, a choice in what to do and say,
And a choice in what to believe, and in how to endure.
But most probably, you’ll simply want to go back to when it was easy.
Back, to when you were spoon-fed everything you could ever need or want.
Back to being lost in supermarkets and holding hands with everybody that meant anything.
No, you won’t want to just bite the hand that feeds you,
You’ll want to devour it, swallow the entire, calloused thing
And still, you’ll be hungry for more.
Hungry for more but no, not prepared to go out and get it.
Hungry for more, but no, not willing to work.
Hungry for more, and waiting.
Waiting for everything to work out.
Waiting for everything you ever wanted.
Waiting for the hand to come to you.
