another poem from high school

although, it's possible that this is from middle school.
i have edited it somewhat, though, since then.

lost generation

We are no lost generation
rambling back home to wife or kids or bottle or job
with barbed wire lining our brains
and national anthems resounding in our heads
images of disintegration and madness do not
replay ad infinitum in our young and tender minds
images of friends ripped from this world like vacuums and abortions
or cut in half by machine gun fire
or mashed into the groung in a tire tread pattern
do not haunt our memories or dreams
We are not the Lost Generation

We are no Lost Generation
We have no Hemingway to expose and die for our sins
no one with the courage to plead utter confusion and desperation
to a world wanting answers
No one who can say little and do much.
...
Who feels the shock now of his shotgunned brains in the woods?
We have no Fitzgerald
to help us laugh at where we have gone
terribly
terribly wrong. He sees our empires built on wealth, constructed on sand,
and F. Scott rolls his eyes and hisses through his teeth
like the opening of missile silos.
We have no Ezra Pound to write about the mystery
We are not the lost generation

We are no Lost Generation
We have been breathing war’s odors since we were young
and we have not been betrayed by a world we never had
we are not staring at walls forever at walls forever
staring at walls
We know the intimacy, when screaming ends and waking begins

Death lines our coffee cups and cigarettes
our paints and our automobiles
our sports and entertainment
our dreams
our despairs
Death waits in every corner
and in every doorway . Death thrives in between
here
and
There
Death does not wait for us overseas
Death has encountered us, acculturated and docile
Death has played with our childhood friends
Death hums the same songs on the radio
Death watches our TV
Death enjoys our company. Death works for our boss.
Death would live among us:
His Found Generation.

~jss