Tuesday 13 September 2016

Millennials' Picnic

‘Never be afraid to laugh at yourself, after all you could be missing out on the joke of the century,’ Dame Edna Everage

If you go down to the woods today, you’re sure of a big surprise;
you’ll catch the strains of Fall Out Boy midst the closely-knitted pines.
They planned their route on Google Maps, brought camembert and wine:
for that’s the way millennials have their picnic.

Twenty-something dilettantes
scribbling free verse lines of anguish in their moleskin books;
don’t enjoy being young and tortured, but we rock that look.

We exaggerate a tad,
think life’s never been this bad.
We’re just dreamers life’s abraded ‘til we’re cynical.
Now we’re choking on uncertainty and laughed at from above,
they all say we’re spoilt idealists like this world is not for us.

If you go down to the woods today, you’ll hardly believe your eyes;
see hipsters frown at phone screens ‘til they’ve got that filter right.
Why immerse yourself in nature if it doesn’t get you ‘likes’?
For that’s the way millennials have their picnic.

Echo chamber politics;
Corbyn is our new Messiah and we’ll follow him;
blocking Tory scum on Facebook and we’re loving it.

Yet I have this subtle hope
(it’s naïve, by God I know):
one day we’ll be in the driver’s seat and change it all.
Perhaps we’ll cling on to our passions and we’ll shout until things change,
screw the tone police and thought pieces that say we’re all insane.

So although we’re quite pretentious and in love with silly fads,
and we’re guilty of self-righteousness and glamourize being sad,
we can all be daft together; in shared folly find a home:
if you go down to the woods today, you’d better not go alone.

Photograph: Ms Hazza Haugvik

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