I
I thought that it would last my time –
That children would always read books
There would always be fields and farms
Where whippersnappers would climb
Where they would run and play in brooks
I knew there would be false alarms
II
But I never thought the malaise would spread this far
Kids not knowing what it is to be out in the air
What it means to use their mind and creativity
Just plugged in to their DSs and their Ipads in the car
Kids rooted to sofas, couch potatoes in the chair
Somehow I always thought their innocence would be free
III
There is always another day, just
As there will always be another excuse
Why we cannot go outside to play
Just sit glued to the idiot-box if you must
Passively watch this world of abuse
As our generation becomes stupider day by day
IV
Don’t write a poem or read a new book
Don’t go and sit out in the sun
The malaise is spreading and infecting us all
The crowd is young and beauty, but rooked
Rooked of their youth, it’s done
As they sit and stare at a screen in a stall
V
This really is what Orwell said, 1984
A world of computers and screens
Before I ***** it, the whole boiling will be bricked in
Nobody wants to play chess any more
A logged on generation, logging up through their teens
First cyber slum of Europe, a role it won’t be so hard to win
VI
Facebook, VK, Kikitalk, Instagram – a world that doesn’t exist
Just a world of fast past insubstantiability
Cock-eyed spelling and refute of grammar
And yet we let these kids get on with their imaginary bliss
We buy them the latest gizmos just for pacivity
And when we ask what’s to be done? You stammer
VII
We, the older generation, who knew a world better than this
A world of trees, and parks and streams
A world of old values, an idyllic pastoral
But with all pastoral, a world that can no longer exist
A world that can only reside in our dreams
Today’s world is ‘fast or nothing at all’
VIII
And I feel sorry for those kids, really
They never got to run around with a stick as a gun
They’re just getting angrier, as the malaise takes hold
Manifesting itself through boredom so easily
And then they go out and buy an AK-471
Oh well, most things are never meant, we’re told
IX
It seems, just now,
To be happening all so very fast,
For the first time, somehow
I feel that good values aren’t going to last.