Affliction of Youth

          Youth is perhaps something all adults want whether it is to live the good times again or to make a better job of the chances we mucked up the first time round. This poem is partly inspired by continued thoughts over those kids who have taken their own lives in Bridgend and partly by a lovely poem sent to me by my Argentinian friend Gabriela by the poet Facundo Cabral. I will post my own translation of his poem soon. Until then, thank you Gabriela.　Muchas gracias por aclarar mi día con un tan maravilloso poema. 

• Am I symptomatic
• Of the melancholy of modern youth?
• Feeling empty and alone,
• Separated by TV dinners
• And bedroom bound internet. 
• There feels like
• There is no one to talk to
• Parents do not understand.
• While friendships expect
• Conformity to be the norm. 
• We are the youth
• Complaining of nothing to do
• Save hang around
• Street corners
• Glaring at passersby. 
• We terrorise
• Vandalise stature and concrete alike
• We knife decent folk
• Because,
• What else is there to do? 
• Something lame? 
• And all the while,
• As we, the distracted,
• Seek our hedonistic highs
• Outside of crumbling innocence
• We are blinded. 
• Simple pleasures skirted over,
• Letter sets, left unopened,
• Chess, drafts, scorned as unfit,
• Rembrandt, Wordsworth and Austen,
• Replaced with FHM. 
• Drugs, sex and respect,
• Expected, never earned
• As lessons are never learned.
• Aborting lives,
• For fame or boredom. 
• We the modern youth,
• Dumbed down and unable to realize,
• That for each thing we miss,
• There are a thousand things to do.
• For each insult rendered,
• There are a thousand kisses waiting for us.
• For each bad parent,
• We see not the goodness in a thousand others.
• And for each evil pint sized Napoleon,
• We, a thousand adults, respect you for who you are not what you reject.

See this poem in bad Spanish:

http://wulfstanus.crumbulus.googlepages.com/laafliccióndejuventud