The Misguided Youth

We are the misguided youth of yestermorn;
the vigilant pursuers of today;
we shall build our world within the world
ere the morrow's night-veil falls,
merely to witness it crumble away
with the awakening of the following dawn.

We are the brilliantly confused,
walking the path of flashing lights
and neon-stigmatism with blindfolds aplenty;
navigating societal seas with compass broken
and unaltered course on the trodden trail we tread,
praising as noble what whispers coaxingly as noble—
the while we sleep, the while we sleep,
for man's bliss is ignorance, and arrogance is his keep.

"We are millennials," we proudly say
(as if the first to speak such words
with pride enough to level a nation),
yet in the deepest wells of our hearts
resides the self-proclamation to be God,
though we control not even the beating
of our hearts, nor the growth of a single hair;
how much less the changing of the seasons
or the ebb and flow of the ocean's midnight tide!

We are the ever-unsatisfied,
groping along in the shadows of our doubts
and clinging to our feeble thoughts,
forever failing to grasp what's true
behind the complex riddles of truth;
indeed, we have not the wile nor wit
to abandon both our selfish way
and the foolish way full'-formed from fear.

We are the evanescent void
of old concoctions made anew;
a sunrise fleeting faster
than the early morning dew;
the ground below, upon which falls
the tufted feet of steps uncertain;
pathways leading on to pathways
winding far beyond this curtain.

We are the foolish and the wise,
who see but with blindfolded eyes;
we are the Shepherd’s prideful sheep,
who must be prodded from their sleep;
we are the virtue and the vice,
whose hearts have hardened in the ice;
we are the young and strong grown old,
who, speaking what we see as truth,
shall give misguidance to the youth.