I believe we are of sound and worthy mind;
That we might cast our constant glare back,
Towards our own transgressions and
Pretensious claims to ascendance.
That we may reflect on our own fortune,
Alive and affluent, rich in life and
Experience ill afforded to our elders.
Perhaps then we might pretend,
If only for fleeting moments,
That we are as deserving as we commonly believe.
For we are nothing if not
The cynical generation, born into
A world so mature that we need be
Nothing but children within it.
We have no politics, no beliefs, no
Drive to propel us into an existence of
Grace and enlightenment. We scoff
At signs of sentiment, we laugh
At barefaced gesture and divulgence.
We indulge in ceaseless pleasures and
Live upon the surface of the shallows.
Yet we forfeit the beauty of feeling,
The release afforded by sublimity;
We are afraid of what is bigger than us,
And we respond with profane derision.
I tire of popularity competitions,
Of gossip and blunt innuendo, of
Social ladders and picking up.
I yearn, with nostalgia and music, for
A time foreign to this weary soul,
A time perhaps non-existent, when
Such games were not all there was.
I look at myself and my peers, and I worry that perhaps we are not as wonderful, as clever, as wise as we believe ourselves to be. And that if we were to realise this, it would surely crush us; for what else does my generation have if not its arrogance?
