Hi.  I'm 18.
Who are you?
Fifteen, Sixteen, Twenty-two?
My dad, your mom, maybe yours too
Was a freedom fighter
A unifier, not a divider
An agitator, perpetrator, liberater
A relator of ideals
ideas
To a revolutionary front
A down right crazy.
Hippie. idealist.
Proding for equality
Quality
And justice
Whose soul
And dream and voice
He stole from no one

It was a true rebellion
Against a set of societal norms
That the Cambridge ladies hold dear
But my dad, you mom
Maybe yours too
Held no fear
In being
That angry candy

And then the revolution
faded
Lost its edge
The best minds devoured, swallowed whole
By sybstance
And lack of ambition

And now my father makes over one hundred thousand dollars a year.  He plans and calculates many thing,  He visits the Missouri Legislature often to calmly discuss laws and regulations.

He no longer campaigns radically for RFK.
Many of the places he was, 30 years ago, banned from
He can now stay.
He has no fear
For his future

Just mine.
Just yours.

And so

We spend our days in a mediocre haze
Of soccer, piano, ballet
We will be accomplished
We scream
They don't want us limited
They won't let us fail
As they did
In their dream

And so we're enabled
We're restabled
Unparalelled by any generation before
We know was we:

Build our resumes
(at the age of ten)
All those after school activities
Will look good on your college application
They'll acccept you with the millions of others
Who interned
Independently learned
Saved the earth
Gave birth
(not to babies)
To careers
To end all fears
Of rejection
During the summer months and on weekends in order to write those 2-5 page essays in twelve point Times New Roman font, douple spaced, title page, with one inch margins, to turn in.

But all this skill
This talent
That seems so run of the mill
Has driven us downhill
To dullsville

WE HAVE NO SOUL
No purpose
No goal
No unity
We think we're free
But I disagree

Even if you won the spelling bee
And got that college degree
That PhD
So you can afford that shopping spree
To purchase you some form of ID
Does that mean you're free?

Free like a bird?

But is he free?
Is not he?
Chained and bound
Like you and me
To the skyway?
But why not beyond the stratosphere?

My dad, your mom
Maybe yours too
Broke free from the ground
To fly with the birds
BUT WE CAN HAVE MORE

We have the ability
To soar to new heights
To make something count
Make something BE
Leave behind for the coming generations
No trepidation
No hesitation
No realisation of failure of defeat
And absolute END to discrimination
Recreation
of civilisation

We could do it
If we tried to see
Byond the limitations
Of our precious selves
Tried for one instant
To think of someone else
Not so priviledged
Or free
Do we
Ever think
Of anything
But me?

How our skills
Serve us

Our only agenda
Confined by our
Self-serving training
Designed to uncahin us from limitation
Have ended up binding us
To our own intrests

If you gice those up
To help others
Save the world
We could reach the moon

My dad, your mom
Maybe yours too
(they're so consumed with you)
But if they were us
That's what they
Would do

There's something beautiful in the way that laminated
Plastic pretension
Came down onto the stash
Our cellective personal rightiousness
Diving, into four little piles of sin
Of experiment
Experience

Neither a borrower nor a lender be
For in that borrowing an lending we
More than just our goods entwine
Mem'ries laughter, love combine

For what we give in turn receive
And thus connection do acheive
On property we thus cast blame
For departures that we fail to claim

Neither a borrower nor a lender be
For in such borrowing and lending we
Are bound to each other
And never free

I am the calming lovely blue
Expanding forever across the sky
Inviting and smiling

I am an oval
Not Perfect in my composition
But lovely in my grace
That is in its own manner
More compelling than the tedium
Of perfection

I am the growth and demise of the moon
Each phase different
Sometimes my everything
Sometimes my nothing
But each shining strong

I am the sound of a celtic flute
Playing its mysterious
And haunting tune
Across the wild moors of
My untamed soul

I am a tiger
Strong and proud
Firm and wise in my judgement
My strength knows no limit

Holy Shit

I am a liar
None of what I said
Though convincingly fed
With pretty words and pictures
Whose meaning is altogether
dead
So I free the leaden weight
WIthin my stomach
And cease with all these lies
Intended for less true eyes
Who, though though not disapprove
Won't know that they ever could
Detest me
My reality
My mood can shift at the drop of a hat
Wherin that smile that grin somehow
Turns to knotted brow
No I didn't warn you
No just cause, that's true
But that's what I do
That's who I am
And no pretty words should ever say
What I'm not
Or try to mask in any way
My utter lack of worldly organization
That I don't believe in sin
That I sometimes lack emotion
And sometimes show too much
That I love my sense of touch
My ideals are impossible
Unadvisable to attain
But still the same
In my equalist world where I subscribe
To a leftist intellectual superiority
I am walking hipocracy
I settle for mediocrity
Hell, I'm downright lazy
Is that what you
Want to see?
Or some lies wrapped up in imagery
Who can simply be
Without validity?
Or do you want me?
Bare
Uncensored
True
Shouldn't that
Should not you
and me
Plain
Unadorned
Free
Shouldn't that be poetry?

As golden twists of reverie
Fall wounded on the sand
Their passing mourned by the drummer
Of your silent skeleton band
She takes my arms but fails to understand
Just what she holds
And how she moves it

But the road ahead is long
And my thoughts are winding

Your desperate cries are fading
They fail to be heard above
The diamond dancing of the one you love
Whose shining footsteps strike you blind
And fail to remind you of
The devestation she's been crafting
That's sure to follow
On the road ahear thats long
While my thoughts are winding

In creation I saw your eyes on fire
With bricks of blood
Your Babel grew higher
As to hold captive your only desire
To fuel and feed and shape the world
As your eyes see it