Tag Archives: youth suicide

THE PROMISE OF YOUTH


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This is what you say:
What experience do you have?
This is what they hear:
You will never get a job.
This is what they think:
How can I get experience 
if no one hires without it?


This is what you say:
What income and collateral have you?
This is what they hear:
I cannot get a small-business loan.
This is what they think:
No one will hire me and I cannot 
start a business of my own.


This is what you say:
Your college loans are over-due.
This is what they hear:
We are going to ruin you.
This is what they think:
I cannot get a job or a loan.
Guess I must move back home.


Failure never felt so certain
to the young Americans
who believed with such purpose
that it would be possible to get ahead.
Now, too many live in dread.
And way too many
wish they were dead.


Is this the America we want?
Is this the America we were promised?
What folly has greed wrought?
What tax system created this rot ?
That only those with wealth
can exercise their rights
to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.


Youth have eyes open wide,
open to all that seems new.
The aged close their tired eyes
hoping nothing at all will change.
But, the aged and their folly shall pass.
America’s promise shall be renewed,
as sure as day follows night.


Vote as if the lives of the young 
depend upon you doing what is right.
Because, their lives depend upon you.
They most assuredly do.


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Filed under POETRY, POLITICS

READ THE DAMN BOOK:before it is banned for bad language

How does one write poetry

while bombs cluster fuck humanity 

and babies are born in bomb shelters?

Ukraine is the latest round of neglect

of children too long the object

of adult selfish-need to be free

of responsibility for anyone but “me”.

Each night children bed down

on cold ground, homeless, hungry, alone.

Or, if lucky, four to a bed before eviction

kicks them and their mom to the street.

Each day children dodge bullets

not only to and from school,

but behind doors barricaded by desks.

Suicide soars among the young.

They watch fire devour tree and flower

as rivers run dry or expire in mud

left behind by a flood.

They watch oceans mired in plastic mulch

rise to drown coastlines and streets

where sewers overflow to taint

the water they drink from lead pipes.

Those are the lucky ones 

who need not walk water miles 

in jugs held aloft on tired feet

with tired minds and tired smiles.

Plastic lurks in cattle feed and breast milk.

We feed our children plastic.

Is this the world we dream of leaving our children?

Is this what allows us to press our tangled hands in our laps

as tanks and cluster bombs mow our children down ?

Ukraine is another chapter in the book we refuse to read,

lest we take some responsibility.

This is the only poem I have today

as I watch children await 

the school bus driving them to their fate

written in the book of life.

Read the damn book!

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Filed under POETRY