My Generation (A Poem)

 
My generation buy keepy cups in Starbucks
because they care about the turtles in the sea.
my generation spin plates, and gyrate
come home late and masterbate,
they share and connect online
and sit on their own and cry,
Because they feel guilty about being rich.

Rich is this? Is it?
Living in a student house like a hospital,
where you beep yourself in, and you can’t escape,
from the luminescent lights that flicker and dim,
where your name is  a number on a database,
and your personality is happy to help on your name badge.
But you’re not happy to help Ben, you fucking hate everyone.
Even the turtles come to think of it, 
because they don’t have to pay rent, or live in a tent
When their mums kicked them out.
Or contemplate their life choices or their wasted degree, 
Fuck the turtles, fuck the keepy cups.
Fuck the guilt you feel for wanking on your friends sofa,
Or for still wanking when the starving children adverts comes on the telly
Because you aren't watching it
You had switched off long ago.

My generation switched off long ago
When the music got too loud and their haemorrhaging brains spilled out into minimal beats
And tiny feats of genius. Washed up on a grey concrete beach
Like a turtle flapping in a bag for life.

Whilst the hippies of the sixties switched off and turned on,
We are just the bi-product of what went wrong.
Too radical too liberal, too neo-colonialist,
Oh fuck with your theories we just didn’t ask for this. 

This. My generation. Who snort ketamine in hot bars,
And hotbox hot cars,
And carve up their arms
Into maps of thick scars
And sing under the few stars, late at night, 
As the paranoid city itches and bitches
And snitches on it’s neighbours because they’ve got a back garden.
ANd you haven’t. 
My generation  haven’t even got flowers or the soil to grow them, they haven’t even got the powers to know the people who own them.
My generation who didn’t catch the bouquet
But caught instead the fever of a bad omen.


So, Ben, as you cry on your own because you feel guilty,
Remember then that you are not alone,
We are all feeling homeless in our goddam homes.
Skateboard through the polluted skies my friend,
Because the smoky skies for you,
Take another Vodka shot my friend because waters toxic too,
Lets go fishing in the plastic seas, where they can’t have our data,
Lets pretend to be like Trainspotting but instead of smack smoke vapour,
Fuck the turtles and the keepy cups,
Because our generation deserves more,
Fuck the sterile houses we can never own,
Because we can never get a mortgage...

And when we’re all but apathetic and our songs been sung,
Who will be the winners then? When our world is all but gone?

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