Tide Pods? Is that all you see?
Do you not see the diverse faces, the voices raised, the worried expressions?
Oh, just whiteboards for faces, blank and bathed in white rays, watching Rae?
Or perhaps, just perhaps, we stay up. Worried. Greta Thunberg our white noise machine.
You don’t know my generation. How could you?
We don’t know our own strength yet, but we do know that might is not right
Everyone pays attention to health and hygiene now, but what about the future?
The future we have will be filled with not viruses, but MRSA
Ready to bite after being hazed time after time, with antibiotics that may as well be placebos
For all the good they’ll do us.
Or maybe sugar pills would be easier to palate, just a spoonful and the medicine goes down.
We grew up on fairytales,
but grew into a very different world. How could we not, born with a silver screen in our hand
And with a phone in our cradle.

No time for beauty sleep, even for Sleeping Beauty
Locked away in a tower, yet Rapunzel still connects
With the hostile world
24 hours news a parting gift, or a parting shot?
A constant stream of inanities,
Streams of squawks of squabbling sorts
Voiced by glittering birds-of-paradise
Seeking only to strut
Undeniable truths obscured by one-sided conversation.
We have the right to Life,
Liberty
The Pursuit of Happiness
But where does our chase lead us?
In a world turned to a furnace
Boiling the measly puddles formed from cold gleaming towers to steam
Steam to turn the cog
To push the wheel of society
To power our greed?
By an unwillingness to change
Or accept change

Perhaps Bezos and Musk can blast off
But for the most of us,
There is no                          Planet B                        waiting in the expanse to embrace us

Mother Nature will no doubt recover
But will we?
For the world we use is not a gift from the Missing Link
But borrowed from our future
Are we that future, who has finally come to recall their sole birthright?
Instead, we inherit a snarled mess,
The Labyrinth, though we have no Ariadne
To lead us to our safety, hidden deep inside
Perhaps. Someone needs to beat a new path
When the old ends

Someone has to be there
Unflinching, ready to do their duty
But not by following orders, but by
Questioning our elders
The height of impunity is now the high ground we must rush to
Before the floodwaters swallow us down
And take us back to the sea we crawled out of
Long Ago

Someone has to be there to pay the taxes
When funds run dry
Someone has to be there to fill the offices
And stock the larders
And that Someone will be there
Invariably, just another cog

Unless Someone breaks the ticking clock
But who will pay the debt but
Us

https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/combating-antibiotic-resistance
https://www.businessinsider.com/typical-gen-z-student-debt-savings-y2k-trends-2021-11#but-pe
rhaps-most-significantly-of-all-the-typical-gen-zer-is-ready-for-change-and-theyll-do-what-it-take
s-to-make-that-happen-13
https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2021/05/26/gen-z-millennials-stand-out-for-climate-chang
e-activism-social-media-engagement-with-issue/

https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/combating-antibiotic-resistance

https://www.businessinsider.com/typical-gen-z-student-debt-savings-y2k-trends-2021-11#but-perhaps-most-significantly-of-all-the-typical-gen-zer-is-ready-for-change-and-theyll-do-what-it-takes-to-make-that-happen-13

Gen Z, Millennials Stand Out for Climate Change Activism, Social Media Engagement With Issue

https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/combating-antibiotic-resistance

https://www.businessinsider.com/typical-gen-z-student-debt-savings-y2k-trends-2021-11#but-perhaps-most-significantly-of-all-the-typical-gen-zer-is-ready-for-change-and-theyll-do-what-it-takes-to-make-that-happen-13

Gen Z, Millennials Stand Out for Climate Change Activism, Social Media Engagement With Issue