The Lost Generation

...

We are the lost generation,

Promised much but delivered into stagnation.

We are at the age where hope should be abundant,

But soon hope is quashed and sundered with reality.

Seek an education they say, it will do you good.

But now blameless and burdened with pecuniary considerations,

We fall into the pit of despair.

...

Buy a degree they say, it will do you good.

But now the degree of debt is all that remains and not what should.

Jobs are offered and not careers,

The laughter of the past has gone like student days and now there are only tears.

Temporary is what is offered with no security,

No hope of a living wage, no way in which to engage

Covering the bare necessities and that's it.

That is all there is to speak of after a hard day's toil.

...

We look with envy at those with gold-plated pensions,

Their own car, their own home maybe even a family started.

A career with all the perks, hope of an early retirement.

We are the lost generation falling from one position and into another,

Just barely scraping by, a life without luxuries and all that's sold a lie.

We were promised much stability only to discover the world is not our oyster,

Inequality has become ingrained those who have plenty have much and those,

Without learn to live on yet less.

...

We hark back to the time of mandatory schooling which all seems so much,

Easier in retrospect. Those grades so worried over a promise that out there in the real world,

If they are good ones you will do well.

But out here in the real world all that book work counts for naught.

Minimum wage and minimum lives surpassed by those who aimed lower,

Surpassed on both sides by those who used their connections and not their degree of paper,

To get ahead.

...

We are the lost generation, voiceless and unable to warn those coming up behind,

That life isn't fair and expectations are too high.

The reality of life is thus: success is hard and failure a given.

Failure needs to be re-defined to become comfortable for those high-powered employements are,

Few and far between.

The enviable outcome of a corner office and a nine-to-five but a dream like a commute.

Skills learned are useless, reality bites and it is such that temporary positions make a life.

If there is any employment at all, for they have sold us all out.

...

We are the lost generation, priced out of life,

Living in cramped shoe box accomodation.

Eating own brand bargain basement food,

Working to live but wanting to live to work.

Desiring there to be something to get up for every day besides,

Paying ever mounting bills.

...

We are the lost generation seeking a future but soon to fall,

To the bottom of the pyramid only to stay there ageing.

Nothing achieved, hopes dashed, degree wasted.

All futures too costly for us, spent and borrowed up to the hilt.

We wait to become adults but there is no manoeuvre for independence,

Just a life of disparity of inequality due to place of birth.

...

We are the lost generation and it hurts,

The wounds cut deep an ever darkening slash through skin and sinew,

Right down to the very bone of scarred self-esteem.

The light at the end of the tunnel has faltered,

The climb up the ladder long and arduous, steeper than in times past.

Rejection becomes a common friend and a likely foe, a routine.

We are the lost generation and we won't be the last.