Reluctant Adults

Reluctant adults
Dumped into the real world

Still children at heart
Wearing grown ups skins  
Uncomfortably held in place by needles and pins
Because imagination dead ends
Where adulthood begins
At the bottom of a crapshoot        
Your future depends
On the alignment of stars
And the rulings of men
You'd never care to meet
And who care less than too little about you
From the tip of your top
To the toes in your shoes
Because you stand alone in the crowds of the many
Numbers running through the Perfunctory administration
At the bottom of a crapshoot
You find no willing participation
No cohesive indoctrination
On the challenges ahead
Or the pitfalls to come
Just the dazed and confused
The shaken and numbed      
The rattled and concussed
Reluctant adults
All empty shells
And shriveled husks
To start new lives and create new worlds
At the bottom of the crapshoot
     
We begin                            

Freshly from the ashes
And newly from the trash          
Baggage in hand
Fleeing from the  past
Kicking up debris
In the wake of our beginnings
The folly of the future
Stays clouded in our eyes      
Stays wandering in surprise    
The great shadow of doom
The pessimist might surmise
But we hope to stay hopeful
The crapshoot's greatest trick
Was stealing wonder from the young
And hope from the innocent