When did I inherit the eyes of the old?
When did I change from doing to watching?
The language of the young has become a mystery
While the reminiscing pull of memory reminds me that I am a man out of place.
I feel the slight resentment I hold at myself
As I look at the youth of today.
I was once like they are now
Or was I?
Are my prejudices toward them or myself I wonder?
But I remember that please and thank you were words often used
I remember your elders were introduced as Mr or Mrs such and such. Not Donna or Hugh.
I remember that people talked with each other and socialised for real and in public!
Should I be seeing these things now?
I’m only in my mid 40’s and yet I see
A lonely broken nation
A divide greater than the ocean that once separated us
Do we really have anything in common with the youth of today?
All social graces are dying and becoming a quaint thing of the past
Something my Grandad did when I was young
And the ocean they surf has a different meaning now.
I once saw a film when the world’s children were taken away
Is this happening now I ask myself.
Or am I just feeling old
Perhaps the ways I am, so familiar and unthought-of,
Are quirky little things that make them smile or smirk
The language I use, an alien diatribe
That registers as familiar somewhere in that binary brain
Perhaps I am just set in my ways like my parents before me
Or perhaps I yearn to feel young and free of wisdom
Either way, the statement must be
We become a thing stuck in time watching on with inherited eyes of the old.