surface tension

We are the nuclear individuals of the post-nuclear age.  We are the walking dead.

The fall-out of modernity; a hypersensitive youth radiating confidence.

All smiles.  Complacent in our role as test-run for the future generations,

of cookie-cutter kids being built to fail but destined to work.

Brought up on Sunday morning cartoons, failed promises and sugary starches.

Educated by our marketing fathers – our divorced, overbearing mothers.

A generation of invincible under-achievers,

binging on confidence; hung-over by the cold reality of truth.

As we drown like Narcissus in the reflection of moving pictures,

and slowly dial down the droning hum of our headsets,

 with eyes peeled we lose morality in R-rated scenes of videogames and porn.

As the bough breaks and dreams of stardom splinter to the ground like pinata pieces,

angry Mousketeers and Happy Meal Kids wake up to the disconcerting hunger-pangs of addiction.

Guzzling down 40’s of natural fumes to stifle very serious troubles and unknown anxieties.

Getting off on nicotine, protein, methane, amphetamines, –

plugging in, turning on, tuning up, racing to go.

The old ghosts of a new generation, lost souls,

 who used their parent’s money to buy fake identification,

so they could grow accustomed to a world that doesn’t need them,

a society that depends on them.  As a mounting suspicion rises in their stomachs –

they’ve grown up too fast, just innocent sheep in wolves’ clothing.

Young men and women manipulated from birth, garnered as mindless consumers;

addicted to paper they don’t own, stained with a hunger they don’t want.

The seeds of discord slowly withering: sown amidst a cold ground, an empty skull, a stifled cry.

A graveyard shift, a dead-end job, a lost mind.

The bombs dropped here but nobody heard them explode.