Growing Up

This poem was written shortly after a friend was sent to rehab for drug use. It is my response to the search for purpose and meaning that society as a whole has stopped caring about.

They found out the truth
He was addicted to failure
He was addicted to youth

He fell down the stairs while you were sleeping
Exhausted from putting too much bread on the table
Oh sing him a sad song
To the one who never found himself

He was given a page with a name at birth
He was given a file with a name at five
He was given a card with a name at sixteen
But not one series of letters ever fulfilled
Nor one word ever breathed life
In the corpse he walked around in

Purpose
Damn that wretched word!
Lost to the tide of life
Choking the breath of life
Adding the weight of life
Eyes losing light of life
Life
Life
Life
Life

Life

The thing that self help can't help
Motivationals can't motivate
Crawls back inside the cage defined by age
But known by wisdom or lack thereof

And never asked to do anything hard
He hates himself and wallows in pity
He proves his own fate true
Addicted to failure
Addicted to youth

Addicted to being told what to do
Who to be
How to act
Never free
Of the loop

He expects to be punished
For crimes of childhood
Only larger in scale
So break out the paddle wood,
Belt of leather, switch
Or ground him in the ditch he awakens in
Spent from a pill or any cheap thrill
That might ask him to forget
He is lost
He is lost
He is lost

So send him to rehab and suck out his life

Maybe he'll return nice
A shell of what was
A shard of what he could have been
A good boy
Dressed the best on the front pew
Because dad said his dad said
But on whose word does dad say

His dad was just a son
A boy strapped to a straight pole
By the sons who bore him

Maybe he would return
Never changed
Still engaged
By forget-youself's
You're worthless
And you'll never amount to
You'll never live up to
There's nothing inside you
Why don't you just give up

And you can keep cleaning his mess
And patting his head
And burry him, heart broken
The day he is dead

This is what we get

So bury him young
Because he made a choice with few options
Because of a thing we've forgotten
Called growing up