Do Millennials have a spending problem? Part 2

Issue 8, Semester 1, 2019

JACOB KAIROUZ, with apologies to Allen Ginsberg

Avocado: I’ve given you all and now I’m nothing.​
Avocado: three dollars and fifty cents, 15 January 2019.
I can’t stand my own generation.
Millennials, when will you stop being so selfish?
Go eat your Saturday brunch.
Stop trying to pretend people care about your Instagram post.
I won’t write my poem till I’ve had my single origin cold brew.
Millennials, when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will your collection of houseplants no longer spark joy?
When will you grow weary of your virulent consumerism?
When will you care about something other than the amount of Facebook likes you got after you posted a photo of yourself dressed as a pixie at Meredith Music Festival?
I’m sick of these insane demands.
You should have seen me reading Mabo.
I am addressing YOU.
How can you let your emotional life be run my Instagram?
I am obsessed by Instagram.
I browse it every morning.
Its icon stares at me as I try inanely to get out of bed.
I look through photos as I sit on the tram.
It’s always telling me about fun. Law students have fun. Landscape architects have fun. Even baristas have fun. Everyone’s having fun but me.
It occurs to me that I am a millennial.
I am talking to myself again.

​Jacob is a Third Year JD Student.