13th Generation American

13th Generation American
Generation X
Child of the 80’s
Product of the 90’s
Herald of the 21st century
13th Generation American
The Twentysomethings
The Lost Generation
The Me Generation
Me me me me me
And you
Us
Look at us
We’re all shining individuals in our little autonomous cults of alienation
Perfect angels in this disillusioned playground we call home
We can be what ever we want
But… what the fuck are we supposed to be?
Are we supposed to hold shitty jobs doing mindnumbingly meaningless work for pathetic wages so that we can forever stay one step ahead of the poverty line?
Collect our dollars and go waste them all in well lit malls filled with a thousand and one varieties of worthless shit?
I’ll tell you what I WANT to do…
I want to breath smog
I want to cry acid rain
I want to burn like the Branch Davidians
I want to fall like the two towers
I want to rip apart every shopping mall
Piss on Nancy Regan
Sing lullabies to every abortion baby
And wash my hands in the blood of every AIDS victim from here to San Francisco
I want to dig up the body of Amadou Diallo and make every crooked New York City cop kiss his dead feet 41 times
I want to take every starving child in Rwanda and Somalia and bring them over here, turn them on to cannibalism, teach them how to kill and prepare game, and then turn them loose in densely populated business districts across the country
13th Generation American
There are 14,008 people in my town
596,250 in my county
8,052,849 in my state
And 288,368,698 in my country
If I’m one in a million, there are at least ten of me in a hundred mile radius
But I think there’s more than that…
I am the fingerprint of the nation
I am the voice of my generation
Screaming to be heard over
The cell phones
Car alarms
And Kurt Cobain
I didn’t ask for this. I don’t remember ever signing on for this gig.
Born into a world of fear
Of Cold War,
Of Mutually Assured Destruction,
Of Iran Contra,
Of Afghan Rebels,
Of Rock Hudson’s deathbed…
They say you’re supposed to outgrow your childhood fears
I guess they were worng, because I’m still scared
Scared of the world I live in
And the future I’ve been given
I’m afraid of people I’ve never met
In countries I’ve never seen
Because I’ve been taught to fear them
All my life
Faceless enemies sitting atop piles of nuclear weapons
Chemical agents
And biological genocide
My boogey man has a face these days
And it’s wearing a turbin
I’m not alone in this either
I’m not the only one sitting up in bed
Waiting for that bump in the night
13th Generation American
An entire generation, still trying to figure out what the fuck we’re doing here
And all we have to look forward to is dealing with problems created by a succession of rich old white men who are living in a waking dream of outdated Eurocentric values, playing a global game of human chess.
Wrinkled pink skinned millionaires
Stuffed into their three piece Brooks Brothers suits
Living with Victorian ideals instilled by their parents who are long since dead
And who’s legacy will forever be inscribed in the soil of Hiroshima and Saigon
Bloated like ticks on the blood of the underclass
Sitting in their corner offices and corporate boardrooms
And city halls and capitol buildings
Lining their pockets with their drug war profits
And trying to scrape together a plan to fight the holy crusade on terrorism
So that they can make a few more bucks off of America’s petroleum based addiction
Before they go silently into the great sleep and shallow graves of a generation of Cowards
And their children?
Bleeding ponytail sellouts
Hippies turned yuppies
Auctioning off their revolution for Designer Jeans
Big Screen TV’s
Viagra
And vacations in the Bahamas
And then they look at us…
“Kids these days… I just don’t get it”
No
You don’t
And you never will
13th Generation American
Hear me roar
Take the E pill
Turn on the mp3 player
Tune into 480 digital cable channels
And drop out of the moral majority
Because it’s a new millenium
God is Dead and Guns N’ Roses are classic rock
This is the post-postmodern age
This is the end of the beginning of the end of history
And where’s my revolution?
Where’s my cause?
I want rallies and marches and demonstrations
And nifty slogans to yell at the the pigs while they hurl teargas at me
Where’s my Ken Kesey?
Where’s my Merry Pranksters?
Where’s my Weatherman Underground?
Where’s my Abby Hoffman?
Somebody steal this generation…
Who am I kidding?
If we had all those things today
Pepsi would sponsor the sit-ins
Old Navy would make T-shirts with political messages emblazoned on the front
MTV would organize their own demonstration march down Broadway to end up in Batery Square Park just in time for a live performance by Justin Timberlake lip-sinking a duet with Neil Young.
The Revolution will be on DVD!
…maybe we are just better off sitting at home playing video games…
13th Generation American
I am a product of my environment
I am the Great Caucasian Hope
I am the fly in the soup of the babyboomer
I am the madcow disease in the BigMac of the fortysomething
I am the west nile virus carrying misquito lurking at the over-fifty corporate picnic
I am the faulty fuel tank of the Space Shuttle challenger
I am the conversation piece paperweight made from the stone of the Berlin Wall
I am Bill Clinton’s Cigar
I am Britney’s left implant
I am the patron saint of SUVs and Bottled Water
I am a 13th Generation American
I am the future