At the recent Creativity Summit in Tulsa this month my kids and I joined a breakout session where we could share our ideas on the question: “How can our schools continue to produce creative young people in a climate of reduced support for education, especially in the arts?” I made a short video and both of my kids answered with a piece of poetry. My daughter’s piece, titled A Sense of Urgency has to do with the reason kids feel misunderstood in the current system. My son’s piece is a reworked poem titled Wasteland. He approaches the idea from a more absurdist perspective because, as he says, the current thinking about education is absurd. Both kids are award-winning writers and I love being able to get a glimpse into their heads. Enjoy!
A Sense of Urgency
Perhaps I just don’t comprehend the issues.
I am a member of a generation
That has become lost in the whirrs of
Machinery, internet porn, and WoW
We are members of Generation Tech
And we do not write on legal pads anymore
We write exclusively with the help of
The Grand Masters:
Microsoft, Apple, Dell and Windows
Words that all mean one thing:
Freedom.
Our own brand of freedom.
On the internet, we are who we want to be,
We can be any gender, any age, any sexual orientation
And in that sense, we are the
Most creative generation
But perhaps I don’t understand the issues
The older generation is trying to impart to us
“A SENSE OF URGENCY”
Because apparently our cities are dying
And apparently it’s our fault
Damn kids with AC and TV and LOL
Kids that won’t go outside when it’s hot
Who prefer the internet to sports
We plug headphones into our ears
Drink Mountain Dew
And stare at the shimmering, lovely screen
Our fingers whispering over the keys
Like mice
And you could practically smell the cooling fan burning,
The processors are so fast
The older generations are trying to tell us
“Stop! Now! Before it’s too late!”
But don’t they know it’s already too late?
That there’s nothing to be done to save us?
The older generations will look at us
And shake their heads, slowly and sadly,
And stare out the windows at our coffee shops
And our sidewalks, crawling with the misshapen mass
Of Generation Tech,
And they will feel sorry for us
That we cannot kick a can across the street and feel the joy in that
BUT
We will feel sorry for them as well.
Because they are trapped dreaming of old worlds
Worlds that are long dead
And we are here, on the information superhighway,
Creating the new
Wasteland
One blustery day,
We decided to build a wasteland.
So we put on our toolbelts and fastened our knapsacks
And set forth to make a difference.
First we had to rid ourselves of the buildings
We didn’t bother to check if anyone was inside
This was too important to worry about casualties
“Why must we lay waste to these places?” one man asked.
“We lay waste to make waste,” I responded
“Or have you no ambition?”
We waltzed through the destruction
To see what had yet to be born anew
Taking a pair of curtains, we tore apart the fabric of time and space
We found an extinguisher and doused the fires of love
We turned a dinner plate and cooked a feast of dead ideas
All to make way four our glorious wasteland
That was to be our paradise
“Is there no food or water?” a woman asked
“We shall feed on the fruits of our labor,” I responded
“And our thirst shall be quenched by the sweat of our work
Or have you no motivation?”
We took food out of cans
We took milk out of cartons
We took files out of file cabinets
It was becoming difficult to work
We could not see through all of the light
The only solution, then, was to destroy the sun
“A rocket?” one man asked
“Too obvious”
“A cannon?”
“Too cliché”
“Perhaps a monster”
“Where do you propose we find a monster?
The lawyers are all dead and the math teachers are too distracted”
Little Billy climbed on top of a recently built pile of rubble
He placed his index finger and thumb an inch apart
So that the sun fit perfectly
He plucked it from the sky and buried it in the dirt
Surrounded in darkness, we could see as clearly as ever
Again we set to work, building as much waste as we could
We tore and shredded and smashed and crushed
When all was done, I listened
I could hear no voices
No children laughing, no men arguing, no women gossiping
Who knows what happened to them?
I care not
As long as I have my wasteland, I am happy
With my wasteland built, I lay down for my eternal slumber
I do not know how long I was asleep
Millennia, years, months, days, perhaps seconds
Perhaps I had gone back in time
What woke me up was more of that distracting light
Muttering angrily, I looked up
In the spot where Little Billy had buried the sun, a star tree had grown
Each star on each branch was emitting the most obnoxious light I had ever seen
I got up to cut it down, but then I saw something
I saw what was left of my wasteland
Instead of rubble, there were buildings
Instead of destruction, there was construction
Instead of remains there were beginnings
I wept silently to myself
They had destroyed it
They had destroyed my beautiful wasteland with society
The fools had no idea
I collected myself and began to travel
There was a thriving place nearby
The perfect place to build a ghost town
SallyPAL 