The Child of My Elder Years

A raging fury of discomfort burns deep in my bones

An aching belonging that grieves an adulthood unbeholden and uninitiated

This culture of “be all you can be” has midwifed a diseased monster born of parents: “Hope” and “Freedom.”

Still, I have climbed the mountain of misanthropy only to find it is an island of isolation and heart consuming hatred.

I have wallowed in the valley desperation and sought out Saviors only to find they are two sides of the same counterfeit coin.

I am snared in the web of consumerism and wrought with guilt for the little appreciation I have offered to a world that has given so much for my subsistence.  

There is no question.

I am lost.

But lost from where and to whom?  

I am cutoff by a world that bears no regard for this discomfort

Beyond labeling such as a pathology or numbing it away with drink and pleasure.

The promiscuous mask of “alrightness” no longer fits comfortably upon my face.

These stale and musty words are no longer sweet to my lips.  

The child of my elder years calls to me…

“Knowing what you knew then and feeling what you felt, what did you do?”

How do I respond to such a question?

My reply bears the weight of accountability for the way I have lived my life,

And an authentic answer can only be sufficiently summoned through the full reckoning of the lifelong deeds I have sown.

For the seeds of this child are planted in the soil I have prepared,

And what will become of me when I am gone will be grown out of the earth from which I now walk,

A ground upon which my ancestors prepared for me and upon which the crucible of past, present, and future is now lived.  

This is grievous wisdom,

A manifesto birthed from a deeply burdened cry of responsibility,

A bellow that reverberates a call to active duty.

Awakened to this imminent ancestral present and a generational life-chain of unremittent consequence,

How then shall I proceed?