i met so many adults
while hanging on to my boyhood
that I always saw life as a stage
filled with actors playing
the role of a collective adult
the complicit role of men
the conforming role of women
the system played them,
whereas as a boy
you at least had yourself
not wanting "to be" a system
a sort of immunity against culture
that catalog dispensing cultural enforcers
those who hailed pope and dictatorship
yet lamented the loss of their very own sons,
productions of state supervised pro-creators
to become an adult was nothing but a future
to be filled with a tradition of false words
as if words narrate themselves into some prosperity
of heaven then hell
or the ubiquitous cry for no more war
adults become functionaries
their words expand into titles,
medals, bureaucracies
see all that
in-between the storms of ideology
and absurd hurrahs
when youth
gets used
dissolved
in war