Kids your age. Pimple-faced college drop-outs who have made unhealthy sums of money forming internet companies that create no concrete products, provide no viable services, and still manage to generate profits for all of its lazy day-trading son-of-a-bitch shareholders. Meanwhile, as a tortured member of the disenfranchised proletariat, you find some altruistic need to protect these digital plantation-owners? – Dean, Serendipity

I’m There.

I’ve never taken the time to look inside myself to see what really counts. Endless days and sleepless nights I put them all behind me, as there’s nothing I can do. Crying out without the tears and dreams. I’ve lost myself inside myself; there is no place to hide. Eventually I’ll climb back out and give myself a scare. All you need to think about is now that I am there.

Born To Run.

We are opposites.

I have roots.
You float on the breeze.

I can’t follow where you go and I can’t leave my life behind.
You can’t settle down and won’t calm down.

You are the ocean.
I am the cliffs you erode.

I can’t go on your adventures.
I have to grow up.

We are opposites.

Yet we reach for each other.

Don’t the waves hug the land and the trees stretch toward the sky?

But the waves can never stay with the cliffs and the tree can not follow the breeze.

Gone Too Soon.

Real Girls

Ladies don’t spread their legs, but girls may do cartwheels. Ladies don’t spit, but boys may do so. Ladies don’t laugh too loudly, but happy people burst at the seams. Ladies don’t intrude on men, but men may intrude on women. Ladies are polite, ladies are this, ladies are that. Ladies are robots.

Ladies are poor fakes who attempt to appear human in order to appease society and good manners. Life is natural. It’s not well-mannered. You’re born crying so why conceal your tears? Mom never had an answer to that one either. She just said it made people uncomfortable, that it was not proper. Whoever set up the rules of propriety obviously didn’t do a whole lot of living.

I don’t want to be a girl or a boy or a man or a woman and I certainly don’t want to be a lady- no matter what mother says. I want to jump and scream and laugh and tell the honest-to-goodness truth. I want to be free. Is that so much to ask? Nobody asked me if I wanted a corset. Nobody asked me if I wanted chains around my wrists. They talk about progress and woman’s suffrage and freedom but they’ve replaced social restrictions with euphemisms, heavy-handed judgments, and great expectations. The only difference is these cuffs are transparent. Visible or not the wind can still whip you in the face; audible or not, a church can still chastise you with its murmurs and its pointed glances.

Ladies don’t make rude, open comments; they tell white lies. Ladies do not sin. Lying, however, is a sin. Ladies don’t do a lot of things but they do contradict themselves. To Hell with being a lady. Give me back my converse and baseball cap and I’ll show you a lady with some pride, a lady who can outrun all the boys and be a credit to her gender because a sex’s merit is not found in the drawing room or at the dining table; a sex’s merit is in the personalities it can boast. It’s in the range of characters it produces- not the robots a society turns out.

A person should be judged by her strength- moral, physical, and emotional- not her virtue and some good-for-nothing white dress. Forget your lady’s virtue. Mine isn’t between my legs and you won’t find it in the kitchen. Mine is in my heart and those muddy, unlaced converse. Unlike your heels they don’t let out the standard, dehumanizing clack and they don’t blister my heels. When my feet hit the ground you won’t hear a lady or any of those impersonal echoes they leave on marble floors. You’ll hear the concrete steps of me and only me, the deafening sound of where I’ve been and where I’m going- lady or no lady.

She.

There are times that she is good at pretending;
Times that she forgets the pain.
She believes her smiles and laughter,
Everyone follows, just the same.

But then there are times when she remembers
And the pain and hurt hit like
Two cars on the thruway
Going 80, colliding,
Life taking, no denying.
All the energy is taken away,
The river runs down her face.
The injuries can’t be healed,
Can’t be forgotten,
Not for a long time.

There are times when she is so hurt,
She can’t pretend, she can’t hide.
She shows her pain for everyone to see,
They wait to see her cry.
There are times when she runs away,
She can’t handle the crowd around her.
She wants someone to run after her,
To find her,
To remind her she’ll be alright.

There are times when she is not brave.
There are times when all she can do is cry.
Moments when people she trusted the most
Move out of her life.
Moments when she feels alone,
A skeleton with nothing inside.

There are times when she fakes a smile and a laugh.
Times when she seems fine.
She wishes it were true,
But she knows once she’s alone,
She will breakdown and cry.