We stole your youth with drugs in the ‘60’s

We stole your youth with sex in the ‘70’s

We stole your youth with AIDS in the ‘80’s

Then we stole your faith in God.

We stole your youth

And trust in your government

We stole your trees

And locked you in the tenement

Then we showed you telephone fraud.

We paved your world and filled it with chemicals

Put cops in schools and changed all the capitals

Left razors in your Halloween candy

And told you to keep the pepper spray handy

Then we spoiled the child, we spared the rod.

The Summer’s heat and the Winter’s chill

Stay longer, Spring and Fall a thrill

We marched for freedom, yet walk free still

With all our crimes, didn’t pay the bill

Then we let you spill your blood.

Though some still make it with spines of steel

More and more are chewed up in the mill

Yet for each who falls, we bear two more,

To bear the pain, to cry and feel

Then ourselves we do applaud.

So, for years that were, and the years to come

Our apologies, here’s your CD ROM

We’re too busy to love, too tired and dumb

To see what truly we’ve become

To let younglings drown in floods.

So, I wonder, should I break the chain?

Put fear aside, embrace the pain?

In the battlefield of your life to come

I can’t remain deaf, dumb and numb.

Will my soul become your shield?

Do I bear you still with what I know

In a land where innocence can’t grow

Where skies are gray and zephyrs blow

Can I win the war to help you glow

Or, is your fate forever sealed?

I cannot change what the world’s begun.

I can’t unfire the smoking gun

But, this I promise unborn son

My legs will find the strength to run

To find a greener field.

Marjan Farzaad 11/25/1996