Uselessness Inc

I was a depressed and indifferent child,
I was intelligent but never as cruel or clever
as my most recent acquaintance,
that minor Machiavelli called Kevin.
The more adults closed in on me,
and rewrote my character as their idea
of cheerfulness, and being compact/contented,
the more opaque I was driven to become.
The interests that adults kept me to
were always subjects that they either kept
so tight a control of-sufficient that I never grasped
what I was meant to know-or the hobby foisted on me
used materials that were no further use for anyone.
So the parental interest was about recycling
old materials disguised as sharing.
Since supervised I shrank, and unsupervised
my interests made me inert enough to be useless,
then uselessness became my default mode in life.
Cheapness come a close second on the agenda.

Thus I was well prepared for the expansion
in the market for long term youth unemployment,
where employers got government money
to appear to train youths for the workplace
whilst the actual aim was to quietly lay waste 
to their futures which would cost too much.

Youths could get out of this rot,
but only through a determined revolt
-by saying 'never again' to the lies
that laid waste to their attention span.
And sharpening their instincts.