Your youthful voice is charming, but it can’t yet speak facts.
You’re all so young, barely lived your life yet.
Full of possibilities, no doubt.
Take it from me, you’ll understand when you’re older.

This is the voice of the old.
The voice that speaks for you
The voice never asked to speak for you
The voice of the wise

Unconvinced youth speak with glares from reddened eyes,
Their gaze, a compliment to their anxious diction.
“But, we do understand, we know- what we’re saying.”
“In our short lives, we know things besides fiction.”

And yet the wise go on ...
“Listen, Take it from me...”,
“Have you ever experienced...?”;
as they speak with dismissal to the trials you’ve endured,
“No, no I’m sure you’re too young to know”.

To this, the youth speak silence first,
Their fervor dashed by deaf walls

Though fewer now, some stand undeterred,
They lift their harmonious voices in turn,
offering this ballad,

We try to learn and try and to speak
Yet tempered voices silence us with their pride
What confidence we’d had, they make us meek
And saunter off with their arrogant stride.

The youthful voices sing their ballad as a hearty song
The unjust wise twist their verses, only wishing to hear wrong.

The wise whom avert their ears shout, “Speak up! Speak up! Don’t be shy!”.
As they drown the words they seek to save
“We can’t have youth who hide their face, You must be brave”

Each time, we comply in this losing game,
Youth speak their truth, speak their heart, yet always suffer blame.

So why?
Why do we go on?

Simple.
Because there is worth to our words, and our wills are strong

The wise may squash some pride we hold
But the youth are smart and brave, and bold

Though the wise may demand some repentant stance
The Youthful voice speaks out and always takes its chance.