Adolescent Wise

I wrote this for every youth that feels they're parents do not understand or the they refuse to listen to what is going on with them. This is for you!!!

Dear parents

Shut up and listen

Listen to your teenage daughter when she tells you she don’t want to wear a dress

Listen to your son when he tells you he don’t want to go to school

You see, you hear the sound of their cries but never really listen to what lies beneath their words.

She’s being raped, He’s being bullied and still you are not even close to the scraped surface

Our youth has their purpose, their reason, their own definition to laugh and glisten

When all you have to do is shut up and listen.

There’s an air about our youth, a scare about them

That when you look at them you see something you may not recognize in their adolescent eyes

And you tell yourself they’re just ignorant as a teenager and that’s how they get by

But I say they’re adolescent wise

They rise above what defies their demise and disguise themselves as a civilized enterprise which surprises even the wisest of us all

And yet instead poverty stricken neighborhood walls down crack smoked alleys and halls our youth of today begin to fall

But you say…they’re just teenagers

Because they’re under twenty-one living under someone else’s roof, eating someone else’s food they don’t know anything;

But that’s just proof we sometimes forget our youth.

The word teen means stuck in between childhood and adulthood; from dogwood to manhood

They’re not yet mentally matured; but be assured they’re not in babyhood either.

A youth today will genuinely leave the house without fear

Until they get near a group of their peers

Who beam jealously from ear to ear

And suddenly they become aware and conscious

Like my shoes here, my iPod is here, my phone is here, my watch is here, and my heart beat is pumping

And right then they feel fear

But it’s the same fear that bears no weight to what I’m trying to say when you state

They’re just teenagers

These teenagers understand the birds and the bees

Can count from one way pass three and can see all you do

Or yet don’t do to please the world around you

They are the implementation of their declined destination

Their environment manifest itself inside their mind

Leaving most blind to the truth

It’s time to reinvest into the future of our youth

Because they’re not just teenagers or adolescents

They’re Power-Rangers with you being their Antidepressant

And just think all you have to do is listen

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had the American Dream

But our youth have traveled to far down stream to redeem the good ol’ days

But we have to give praise for those who can endure this insecure world

That can leave them premature, immature, reassured, and calling themselves an entrepreneur

See you did not have to face the troubles of today when you were teenagers

The streets weren’t filled with more cops than cars

And even though you fought the battle of racism they’re the ones left with the scars

One out of every five people your child talks to will be stabbed or gunned down

And one out of every ten will be charged with possession in possession and put themselves in a position to say I’m just another statistic

Tell me if this is a problem you faced as a teen?

Cause these teens today breath green

Cause trees are weed

And weed and ecstasy are a common theme among this generation

Two in twelve females will become pregnant before finishing high school;

One in five is drug-dealers, and in this era being a junky is cool

They have traded hip-scotch for blunts and bubble gum for a hand gun

Things have changed, things are not the same and childhood is no longer fun

Our workstation brings starvation and frustration which feeds our own damnation and there’s no negotiation to translate the temptations and fixation among our youth

But they’re just teenagers

And we are constantly in a confrontation that ends in complications because there’s no concentration on communication of information

So the parent and child are both left uneducated

A mother, a daughter

A father, a son

We can all be on the same mission

But parents you must shut up and listen

 

 

 

 

Author's Note

Please add any comment you see fit...I love feedback!

Reviews

[Aventicus]

Interesting, definitely, and a good write as well. I want you to look back at your poem, specifically at the parts where you think you drove your point home. Yes, the culture of today is incredibly tough on the youth of our age and without proper guidance, the youth falls to the seductions of that culture. It is up to those over them to show them how to be courageousness enough to say "no," and be smart enough when to leave so that they can preserve their own integrity. If a parent fails to do that, he/she has failed as a parent. Yes, it is good for a parent to listen to the troubles of their children, but it is not wholly their fault for the bad situations their children end up in. A good parent rears their children so that they will not fall to the world, and if they do, they will pick them back up, again and again, and set them back on the right path. But, we must recognize, as you have shown here, how a parent can and sometimes will fail at this. If they fail multiple times whilst still keeping at it, you know they love you and are still trying to guide you. If they fail once and never strive to make up for that failure, then you know they harbor no love for you in their hearts. Also, don't assume that the teens of today have it any worse than the teens of any generation. Your parents were teens once. They had it as hard as you did or as others of their age did, but most likely in a different way.

[Latoria Sheppard]

I am glad you took the time to review my piece and your feedback is greatly appreciated. However I think you missed the whole gist to the point I was trying to make. I am not blaming parents for what their teen may or may not go through because I understand one can raise a child to the best of their ability and the world will still throw them for a loop. Nor was I saying other generations did not have it rough growing because I think each generation as its own battle to fight. The point still remains that teens are left unheard and misunderstood. If we all parents and teens can come together and just listen to one another just maybe things can change. As we get older we forget the struggles of our youth so we look at those younger than us as not yet fully matured. True but we must remain teachable and approachable.