The forests of my childhood are silent,
Kids sit in rooms of solitude,
Surrounded by peers,
The trees under which children used to play,
Are lonely,
Lonely as the hearts of the kids,
I see them now,
Sullen faced somnambulists,
Earphones on,
Blocking out the world they don’t understand,
Zoned into the screen of all knowing and tall-tale telling,
Hyper-connected islands of beings,
Saturated by information,
Sleepless nights,
From lack of imagination to dream,
Flat stones lie on the river shore,
With nobody left to skip them across the smooth water,
Bored and thoughtless,
Breathing but not living,
They distance themselves from the real world,
Afraid of the “outside”,
Afraid of the world they have spent their whole lives learning about,
But never living in,
Feeling like they’re not fitting in
As they strive for Facebook likes,
Anxiety grows,
As their inability to socialise shows,
They slink back into shadows of comfortable discomfort,
Stressed because they are bored,
Bored because they are stressed,
Everybody feeling the same,
But unable to express it,
The dogs grow fat,
As their leads are left swinging on the back of the kitchen door,
The adventure in the world has been stolen from them,
Replaced artificially,
Superciliously,
God gives us the gifts of his garden,
But the once well-worn paths now wear wreaths,
And the forests still remain silent and lonely,
Forgotten,
Waiting,
For history to repeat itself,
And for laughter to echo once again in the valley.
The Degenerate Writer 