'If' Millennial Edition (With Apologies To R. K.) Poem by Aaron Marchant

If you can stay in bed when all about you
are leaving theirs 'cause they have work to do.
If you expect your dad to pay bills for you,
but still insist on an allowance too

If you complain, and not tire of complaining
Or telling lies about, claim facts are lies
Or being selfish, unaccommodating
And yet show no respect for others tries

If you can't wait, and always want things faster
If you just think that others are to blame
If all you'll eat is cheeseburgers and pasta
And treat your mothers cooking with disdain

If you won't have a shower once you've woken
Listless and vain, you take us both for fools
Or claim our decent way of life is broken
Is that the stuff they're teaching now in schools?

If you won't give your life some underpinnings
And risk it all, 'cause you ‘don't give a toss'
and when we point it out, you stand there grinning
Well, don't expect us to make up the loss!

If that's the way you intend to continue
You're on your own, Your bags are packed - your gone!
And so show us the courtesy we're both due
Or else we will be telling you ‘Jog on! '

If bad language and weed stay in your purview
Or you keep breaking everything you touch
If both a court fine and a police curfew
Appear to count with you ‘not very much'

If you can fill your glass with stolen spirit
With no remorse at all for what you've done
Your life's no worth or anything that's in it
And - which is more, you'll be a bum, my son!