Generation

    B'ney Yisrael, the deep descendants
of Yitzchak, of Yaakov, all those before
who scripted our prayers and shaped our pendants
and lost sons and daughters and self to the war
that lashed your backs as you faced transcendence;
the rhythm of struggle, that heartbeat of old—
Will we, the children, make new amendments
to that which we seek, what to lose or hold?
We fight even now to build a buffer
between the world's howling and your bones
not knowing our sentence — to find our homes
or simply a slightly new way to suffer.
    Shall we feel out your ways while time grows rougher
or build new pathways that could be our own?

I'd like to say that the use of nonstandard spellings isn't meant to be pretentious or distracting. This poem is a verbalization of one of the fundamental questions I've faced in my life.