A Farewell to Failed Young
(A parody of Sir Raleigh’s “A Farewell to False Love”)

By K.D. Taylor

“Most of you should disassociate yourself from your children! Because they’re losers! If your kids are eight, nine years old, they’re finished. There’s no way humanly possible you’re gonna change them. They are [expletive] through! So don’t waste your [expletive] time with them.”  ~ Dan Peña 

Farewell, failed young, the brood of teeming flies,
The grubs and leeches glommed onto the best,
Parasites all, that sap from my supplies,
Verminous spawn that leave me dispossessed,
Defilers that would wreck me through disseisin,
Bringing privation in my harvest season.

A lethal blight that withers up my bowers,
Composite menace, aphid in my rose,
A cold, wet blanket thrown that soon devours
And snuffs the heat just when ambition glows;
A chain that chokes, a yoke that slows my gait,
A band by which I’m fastened with their fate.

A den decrepit, needless now to mend,
A goalless game, a run no prize to find,
A spree that only squanders what they spend,
A raucous romp for no rewards designed,
A growth like rust that wastes gold by the ton,
A screed of scandals from the wrongs they’ve done.

A nameless face, a waif of downmost tier,
A fabric fit to be no more than scrap,
A waste that might have been a won frontier,
A shiftless slouch who only yearns to nap,
A dam set to obstruct my profit streams,
A bodement that foreruns the death of dreams.

Then that my rise should no more be delayed,
And that I reach all that for which I’ve pined;
And that I might no more see hopes dismayed,
Which long I’ve chased through every daily grind:
Failed young, home life, and filial ties I leave.
I rue each youth I ever dared conceive.