What’s happened to our adolescents
Once so quiet and acquiescent
To cause this indecent descent,
The senses tricked out in rags iridescent?
Centuries of forced aphorisms,
Epigrams, fantasies collected…
Sir, it seems uncertainty has gripped
Bewildered and bedeviled, beset by revelations
You, quick-witted and once so well-equipped
From revelry disheveled, devoid of decorations
With quips and close quotations, now stand stripped
Submerged in declarations, invalid valedictions
Whipped by nymphs now whispering and thin-lipped
Demanding preservation without any conviction…
I don’t know if it’s vulgarity
This frivolity bedecked with cruelty
Appearing with regularity
So can we call it modernized beauty?
Defended duly as disparity…
Well, one and twenty’s become notorious
For spouting saucy scribbling,
Madness, menace and mincing like a minstrel,
Gnawing and nibbling.
God’s morality treated as uproarious
Like vice and charm are siblings.
Prick, provoke to prove one’s not provincial
Dressed for the fin de siècle…
No translation of knowledge now ancient
Makes their interests natural or nascent
Tell me then, what’s your blind impression,
So long lauded, praised and prized as prescient…



From The Anatomy of Invisible Insects by The Invisible Insects