Poem For Youth Lyrics

Now

We don't know anything

But we plan to learn

And see everything there is to see

Because we haven't been anywhere yet

We're going to have to forget every piece of wisdom we've heard if we're ever going to learn

That we'll never be the same people we were before we could drink our parents under the table, and before we knew evil

When the biggest mysteries we knew were

How boys could ever hang out with girls and

That strange trick where your friend's fingers formed a church and steeple

We are not those same people

Never will be again

Yet we spend some days with some of the same friends

Finding out that the greatest mystery is not with boys and girls

But between women and men

When we drink now, we pair paper with pen

And the only trick we play is on ourselves

Testing how long the candle lasts when you burn it at both ends

We cannot be what we were back then

Because we learned

We grew

Children make the most of mud

And we're still dumb kids mixing water with something stronger than dirt

Just to try something new

We count stars for the sake of counting them

Fall in Love for the sake of falling, laughing as we do

We have done nothing, we have been absolutely nowhere, but goddamn it we are going to

Give us blank maps and we'll draw in our own path

And that's where we'll meet the rest of you