Disrupted Youth

Youth has been lost
Youth has been disrupted
Youth will never be the same
Like a silk Hermes scarf
youth has flown into the desert
And I don't think it's ever
coming back.

A mask of the Academy
has replaced it
A shroud of philosophy
is dying to pontificate
A shadow of poets and novelists
and yes, theologians too, has tinged
the once youthful heart with a
small stain
Portals of beauty and portals of truth
have become cries of anger and confusion
and false becoming and false belonging.

Knowledge has framed the youth
Placed it in a temporary padded room
Youth needs to breathe
but it seems to have forgotten how
Youth has never had a moment of freedom
It doesn't know its ontology
It doesn't know its path
Instead, youth is sucking the blood of
long dead poets, feeding off of their
manipulated, distressed corpses
Youth is in atrophy.