What they gave you was a lot of praise
and words like potential and brilliant.
What they wanted was a mighty work,
a timeless life, a transcendence.
What they'll take is a translatable success.
The thing is, they never taught you
words like realized, actualized, or sweat.
In the end, it isn't that the 60's failed
or that the need of all the once-hippies
will run-dry the well of Social Security,
but that, they gave you the world
and it was beautiful and dangerous and fragile,
and all the splinters of glass as it shatters
will look like rain, or ice, or snow,
and you'll watch from your parent's basement
And wonder with great concern and slight shock,
unsure of the words regret or failure or responsibility,
who's going to shovel the driveway?