This Common Era
 

Oh, Brave New World
…and all of us forced to inhabit it
We were cursed at birth,
Still we’re trying to make the best of it
How this land has grown
it’s vines hovering past the heavens
Yet they’ve branched far beyond us now
To be raised merely as peasants
I’ve been beaten, I’ve been scared
I’ve done everything but cared
Ruthless, but at least self aware
That our futures aren’t ones to be spared
Yes, this is the common era
These are the times that we’ve changed
We’ll always be watched but expect to be self-taught
By the traitors who love us in feign
We hail from the fathers of confusion,
The mothers of love and cocaine
who sit now in their institutions
Satisfied with days all the same
We know of your good intentions,
pleased with the money you waste
Spent to pay off the reflection
Of how we follow all your broken ways
But it’s different now, so modern
Rusting even before we age
Better off as lambs, in slaughter
To be packaged and then thrown away
Yes, ring the bells for the common era!
We were bound to end up this way
Pretending to get by ‘til the evenings high
Just like you were, back in the day
Now we’re off to end up in your shoes
Letting our dreams vanish for jobs
Which you’ll get now if you’re pampered and approved
So be enslaved or stay being lost

There is certainly something distinctly common about this poem.

If I may be so bold as to be blunt for a moment, I would politely call it a hackneyed, routine, altogether prosaic piece of "work" that is both wearisome and habitually humdrum at the same time.

4/10