They Learned It

for the children

Lawdy, these rioting, robbing, shooting, and flash mobbing children are just bad-asses and by their Big Brother, facially recognized, social networking snitch campaign, video evidence (as seen, broadcasted keen into the public record), bad-ass is half-ass true because what really turns my joy towards sad is they learned it all from you.
The angry young man shoots a congresswoman. We grieve hard. Who conceived the arrogance?

“We don't know what went wrong!”
“He lived at home.”
[Did we … just quote … the parents?]

Separatists and supremacists rear ugly heads. Cowards march to rallies with guns. Some condemn them asHaters Who Have Been Misled by ignorance widespread over generations.

They demand lower taxes. The same Old Parties drinking teas; striking out at mythical Welfare Queens; and voting for wars funded with debt, increasing deficits through trade, then borrowing your moneybacks from overseas.

How did your bad-ass children grow up to be so god-damned mean?
We may blame our children as cultures tend to assume and say, “The kids have gone bad.” But we are the parents who perpetuate these deadly trends: The Society of Repeating Moms and Deadbeat Dads.

Divided by the past, incomes, and where our dead ancestors came from, living in neighborhoods segregated by inauthentic, arbitrarily defined cultural constructs such as “class” and “race,” with declining educational outcomes and eroding working class incomes: the same old plights for the next generation to face remain apace.

Instead of our future and beautiful children, it should be your excuses thrown under the bus. These things the children do over and again, who creates the sin?

 They learned it from us.

 {by Dennie T for the children}

They Learned It ~ Read by the author

Illustration for this poem by Scott Williams for Published Poems for Penny C, available in eBook form on May 4, 2013

My friend Dennie T wrote this poem. I think it definitely puts the finger on the things we see these days that kids do. Petty theft, grand theft, rape, torture, murder...They Learned It From Us.

Lord have mercy on me, a sinner.

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