My Generation Poem by Sarah Dharmasiri

A baby stares with unblinking eyes
at two world leaders spitting despise

Born into a war of hatred of mind
willing each to destroy the entire of mankind

No time to play with jobs so demanding
Give kids a Megadrive it will stop them from sounding

Stories with mother replaced by TV
The real world descends on a child of just three

To nursery children sneaks the milk and cookie snatcher
Education cuts by Margaret Thatcher.

Men strike hopelessly starving themselves
fighting for pay in dark coal wells

A country miles across the sea
Sparks a war of men and controversy

The Iron Lady leads them blindly in
The recover an empire that's rotten within

That lady herself faces an attempt on her life
The IRA warns us through trouble and strife

Entrepreneurialism and a market so free
If everything's for sale, what about me?

Section 28 a condemnation for gays
'if we stop their rights we'll change their ways'

Alarms fitted for schools after a madman lay claim
to sixteen little bodies in the town of Dunblain

A world full of evil, Rwandan Genocide
A world I'm brought into with nowhere to hide

A world now rotting from the life you have led
Global warming, ozone loss, acid tears shed.

But I don't understand yet this world that I'm in
Spice girls, power rangers, video-gaming.

A world with big pictures, everything's large
switch over the channel to Homer and Marge.


Britney Spears bursts onto the scene
a 'virgin role model', not quite so obscene

Princess Di leaves now Mother Theresa in succession
I lose my father,1997

The millennium passes the 'bug' caused no end
Just a media panic on a party weekend.

CD's and Walkmans, PC's mobile phones
An internet cookie trail won't lead Gretel back home.

Give them a TV, fill it with SKY
Watch their faces like zombies, imagination to die.

Anime DVD's fill up shelves
in huge music stores in now know quite well

Extreme sports thrill us, bring us alive
While other lie dormant with reality shows live.

I leave my house, just me and some friends
Social workers question us, 'why are we dead ends? '

I'm not, I reply, I just don't feel afraid
To move away from the telly with others my age

Is your mother single? Why are you so bad
Rebellious youths, what makes you so mad?

Because I am young I apparently contribute
To failing standards and public disrepute

Goths and Chavs the new 'species' emerging
Rebellions must stop, the youth require purging.

Pierced and rebellious the youth want to be
but don't you remember you were once like me?

Crime is rising, Beat back the youth!
Teach them a Lesson! Force-feed them our truth!

Old men to afraid to step out of their doors
Youths are out of control elections warn

You say we are idle, perhaps we just aren't
Part of a world that's resorted to arms.

An innocent laugh turns to a cackle,
In the mind of the media, dark eye of the people

In your eyes were doomed, poorly raised and lethal
Psychologically troubled, sick twisted and evil

A new breed of criminals, young pregnant mothers
All crooks and liars, all car thieves and muggers

The youth invasion the politicians version.
I don't feel like a threat. I feel like a person.