between the cracks

The article in the newspaper

confirms that the reigns of power

will be handed on a platter

from the baby boomers

to Generation Y

Gen X

now and forever

the Jan Brady

of time

the awkward

middle child

Profiles of six

up and coming

Gen Y  about to turn  thirty

reveal a yawning mediocrity

I want to travel some more

I’m not ready to settle down

My friends are important to me

The minutiae of these

lives is not mediocre

to those living them

The yawning malaise

lies in the fact

that this is front page news

Are we so numbed

by warming and terror

catastrophe and technology

that we could not

find six up and coming Gen Y

with passion to burn

and desire in their eyes

for what may be possible?

This is no revolution

this is no overturn

this is a global reading of the will

from one generation to their offspring

Designed to anaesthetise

gloss over the damage done

the wrong turns took

Look!

You don’t even have to fight for it

The power’s yours

We’re off to spend our Super

Good luck with this thing called Planet Earth



If your thoughts turn to death, as can happen at the start of a new year, I have recently found the words of Walt Whitman to be of enormous comfort:

The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,

And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,

And ceased the moment life appeared.

All goes onward and outward ... and nothing collapses,

And to die is differnt from what anyone supposed, and is luckier.

Those words are from Leaves of Grass (Song of Myself).

Old Walt has that peculiar shining insight that is the gift of true depressives. He struggled a lot with life and so you can believe his fervour when he finds things to celebrate and be hopeful and thankful for.

Happy New Year 2010.

May we all find light and fervour in the most unexpected of places.

When I was a child

Christmas whispered

Now

it shouts