THE NOSTALGIA GENERATION [wattys 2018]

YOUTH

we are young gods,

daughters and sons of a generation

who gave up on love a universe ago, 

but we do our best to experience it-

 we sell it in bottles of pop culture and rabid obsessions;

turn it into a conglomeration that profiteers on excess,

a chaos of depression, anxiety, dark self-depreciating wit-

and become artists who lament on first-world tragedies.

we are young gods,

we scoff at religion and we bathe in unholiness,

sin is the new in, black is your best act, and we love it;

we wear our indifference like an armour,

because we fear what we'll see if we're allowed

to understand our emotions and display our vulnerability.

we are young gods, 

happy ever after is a joke and true love even more so,

we inhale criticism and exhale cynicism,

because the titans before us acknowledge that the world is cruel

but we embrace it- we drape ourselves in abject and misery,

stitch and mould uncaring faces onto our flesh that gaze upon

the heartbroken jagged shards of ourselves, bleeding guts and glory 

embedded all over the cement patch wood floors, amongst the whisky and wine. 

we are the young gods;

a mass of degenerates with our entitlement and liberals,

a numbing, sweet hollow feeling that we substitute 

for the lack of love and care that we've grown used to;

a realism that carves like a knife at tender ages and

we wear our sadness like a charm- aesthetics to be envied;

we're self-destructive, faithless, pointless, 

burning in our question for the meaning of existence

and the only religion we'll ever bow down to

is ourselves.