The vast gaps in cross-generational understanding and communication.
‘For anyone
Who needs us
We’re here
To talk’
One day I’ll go
I’ll open my mouth and
You watch the tar and flies fall out
Clear the filthy sludge from my mind
And speak to you
Who cares so much
You hold me back after class
And catch me in the hallways
To ask if I’m okay
The nerve you have
The cheek you have
To imply
That you are any force to reckon with such a
A troubled youth
A broken youth
A disturbed youth
A hopeless youth
What would you know about the world
That we live in?
As far as I’m certain
We’ve never invited you over
How dare you
Try to comfort me
To open me
To touch me
With your wrinkled hands?
The audacity.
This poem is quite self-explanatory in the disdain and scorn the young speaker has for the adults who try to offer misjudged help and understanding. I believe the inspiration came partly from trying to watch Skins when I was fourteen (which is questionable, but proved fantastic for literary scope). I wrote this poem at around sixteen years old, at the height of a time of tension at school as my peers and I responded to tragedy. I definitely absorbed a lot of the attitudes I could sense and tried to channel it into this poem, hence the one-sided teen perspective. The poem wasn’t meant to be a fair consideration of emotions and efforts, it was meant to be the youth’s perception of the well-intentioned but out of touch statements and actions of the adults around them.
Ingratitude, selfishness and unreasonableness could be a retort in defence of adults trying to do their duty of protecting and supporting young people, but teenagers never set out to process their emotions in a convenient and cooperative way. Adults have the responsibility to be patient, genuine and in-touch with the very real problems young people go through.
Remembering what I was experiencing and observing at the time I penned this as well as balancing a more mature understanding of where adults are coming from now makes this poem very interesting for me to re-visit.
