My Generation

I see my generation like a flock of flustered mutton,

following questionless the parade of white wool and black hoofs in front of

them, the crowd behind,

taking step step step each hoof falling on well walked earth.

I've seen our rebellion talked about in the boardrooms of marketers, I've

seen our rage focus-grouped and dissected at the top of perfect white office

buildings, I've seen our freedom imprisoned underneath a CD case and suffocated

in shrink wrap.

I've seen books go yellow and unread.

I've seen the brilliant minds too scared to make a sound, light bright and

burn their brilliance. I've seen us hiding in corners, crying. I've seen us

huddling in school chairs, bad postured, uninspired, and then I've seen us

with our friends, bored.

I've walked the path that was made for me and I'm enraged because now that

I am so far down it I cannot turn back I find that I am not really meant for

this path, for any path.

I have seen my freedom sold for comfort.

I've seen me beaten with books so I would study, I've cried days for my future

years ahead.

I was first unpopular and diligent, then I thought I'd be popular and was

lazy, now I am alone and hopeless.

I have seen the television

and I've heard it tell me how to live.

I've seen people packed unwilling into school; I've seen us squirm with such

contact with each other. I have seen the kingdom of heaven in designer brand

labels humming Tool revolutionary, shedding money, sweat and time over

 manufactured,

packaged revolt.

I have seen flourecents flicker, and in them dreams.

I have been pounded into a mould and I haven't fit. And I've curled myself

into a ball so I could fit. I've starved myself. I have purged vomit from

my system with alcohol, I've slit my wrists and bled myself but I've never

fit. And I am meant to believe that this is my fault.

I've had friends and I've had nothing. I've had lovers and I've had nothing.

And in that nothing I have watched television.

I have seen numinous beauty, I have seen god at a party once, high on some

chemical poison, I have seen angels bathing in yellow street lights and I

have seen the bible scratched onto desks, spraypainted, written on a tear

of forgotten paper.

I have seen hell and it is in high school.

I have seen demons walking on the street acting like people. Jealous, the

people start to act like them.

I've sneaked into centerlink with a booklet under my arm and shrinked to the

photocopiers amid junkies and the lazy and I've copied lines of poetry there

instead of my resume and they kicked me out. I've snuk back in again and they've 
kicked me out. I've had friends sneak in for me and somehow, they too were

kicked out.

I've lied and said that I have crossed our nation's capital.

I have hated the ones who loved me and the ones I've loved have looked upon

me like a distraction, an annoying bug, have judged me to be but a bag of

flesh devoid of feelings.

I have fallen in love like Romeo and Juliet, my love escaping boyfriend, parents

and police to be in my arms. We have been alone, always but always together.

And I was sure that was love and the world was right and that nothing could

ever be wrong again. But then Juliet realized I too was not like her and that

it was never love.

I have cried.

I have cried in Woden. I have cried in Tuggeranong. I have cried in civic.

I have cried crashed on the floor of my school. I have cried on an airplane.

I have cried in Fadden, in Downer, in Hacket. I have cried on my way home

from Hope street. I have cried as I struggle to sink into sleep.

I see the same things day after day after day after day and I want to scream

and break everyone out except that I have nothing to

scream and no voice to 
scream with.

I have read Ginsburg to girls I loved in coffeeshops.

I have spread poetry to the fools who need it the most.

I have bought drugs with charity money, got high going hungry.

I've watched 14-year old girls snort speed off of a mirror in an unlit room

on New Year's eve in some flats high in public housing.

I have been in civic, my one refuge. And then I have seen civic poisoned by

my once perfect love.

I have screamed on the radio but no one's listened.

I have e-mailed love to girls with too much.
I

 have seen my time dwindle, dwindle away, hiding from the pain that rocks

my body.

My decisions have all been made, my bags packed, my world cut short because

of stupid life.

I have tried to slit my wrists.

I have screamed to everyone how this is not the way but no one's listened

because it's so simple. It is the way.

I have been tired and slept on sofas, on benches, on the floor.

I hated life then loved it.

I have been shown that friendship is one great lie.

And then I have searched the streets for friendship as if it were a magic

bullet that could kill all my problems that my loneliness would be filled,

that I would know what to say and what to do and what to feel like besides

this

and then I spit in the faces of my friends because they are nothing.

So I trap myself inside, working, marking, filling my brain.

I have learned more in three days with my people in Newcastle than I have

in an entire year of school.

I have learnt more from books than I have from television.

I have leant more from friends than I have from parents.

So I write it all down.

I see the tip of a blur of my pen dash across the page, taking breaths and

leaps and scratching, scrawling. I see white paper poisoned by a point of

flowing black.

And that's all I see.

I see my generation, lined up like cattle, waiting, waiting to die.