Claiming same *** relations
To be the pitfall of a nation
Cleansing complete souls
Causing shattering and holes
In the name of fictitious practise
Of a religion that asks us to act as
A dictated definition of normal.

A savage hypocrisy
Between finding love
And finding acceptance
With belief that
Same *** relations
Calls for some repentance.
We forced kids out of homes
Pushed adults to take their lives
Yet still claim we support
Their conquest for love.
Where kids held their heads in shame
As though they are ones to blame
For all the wrong turns the world gives
And all the insults they receive
cut deep into a part their flesh doesn't enter,
Into their hearts.

We tried to play god,
Generate a society of facade
And the resulting chaos,
Heartache and suffering
is merely a start.
So until same *** relations
Is fully accepted
We'd always be indebted
To those who walked
In silent shambles,
Indebted to those
Who became voiceless
Not from fear
But from tireless
Nights wide awake
Struggling between themselves.

We tried to play god,
But instead god played us.

Creating a surface
For a new purpose
As they cut,tuck, snip
and continuously clip
on their body.

Touch on makeup
That you're fake enough
To finally become
a shine in the sun
that is considered hot.

Create a creature
that contains features
of more plastic
as well as more tragic
and less unique.

A facade
that becomes so hard
to ever let go.

I can still see it. I am twelve years old looking at my mom lay in her hospital bed. They told me she had a hole in her esophagus, and not too long ago, had been dying of blood loss. I stand still too shocked to cry, and in my trance I hear the hum of the t.v. behind me. And I know that if I flip through the channels right now I’ll land on a commercial depicting false paradise. Toned, tanned, pretty people on a beach smiling like they were in Heaven as they swallow down the drink that put my mom and my family through hell.

I am a biased person. This tragedy that I have gone through has made me biased about all subjects relating alcohol. If I were to have one wish, it would be to expel the very idea of alcohol from our heads. But I can’t do that, just as I can’t let my opinions cloud my vision for the future of the families of America. In this simple vision, alcohol advertising is banned from television and radio.

Researchers found that an average of 29 percent of alcohol TV ads in Houston, Los Angeles, Dallas, Atlanta and Chicago don’t abide by voluntary standards set by the industry, which involve not being shown during t.v. shows where at most 30 percent of the audience are kids. One out of eleven radio ads for alcoholic beverages in 75 markets across the nation in 2009 failed to comply with the alcohol industry’s voluntary standard for the placement of advertising.

Alcohol advertisements aren’t the only type of ads that violate our industry’s standards. We see it all the time, when some sketchy commercial on t.v. has microscopic words at the bottom or a radio ad has the bad information sped up quicker than our ears can catch.

I believe that alcohol shouldn’t be prohibited, because I believe that people are born with the right to choose what they want to do with their life. But with that in mind, let’s let them choose! No more brainwashing commercials that promise a good time, let us decide what we need in order to have a good time.

Maybe then there wouldn’t be 30 percent of American adults and one in five teenagers living with alcoholism, 6.6 million children living with alcoholic parents and tens of thousands of alcohol induced car crashes. I believe that this will change. But I don’t just believe for those numbers I said. Thirty, five, one, 6.6 million--what do numbers mean? Nothing.

I believe for the kid who thinks drinking might solve her problems. For the other kid who wants heaven, but doesn’t want to get there too quickly. I believe for the little boy who has to take care of his siblings because his father is a drunk and his mother works hard. For the guilt ridden, God fearing man who can’t stop falling asleep with a bottle in his hand, I believe.

I believe that for the good of America, alcoholic ads can be, and should be banned. Because I never want my mom to have to sit me down again and say, “Bailey, I fell off the wagon” all because of our bandwagon, conspicuous consumer society. Because there are moms and dads here, wishing their kids were in paradise--playing volleyball, building sandcastles, and collecting sand dollars. Because approximately 100,000 people will die this year of alcohol related deaths, 4,700 of them, teenagers.

In the 1970’s, Cigarette advertisements were banned from our television sets and radios. The 70’s were considered the “me” generation. Hopefully, alcohol advertising will be banned as well in 2016, because we are the generation of activists. We are the “we” generation.

A swingset out in the backyard reminds me
Of years from long ago
It's been over a decade since I've walked those paths
Today I decided to go back on the paths
And I sat in the overgrowth
And allowed myself some tears
I want to go back to the days from long ago
Full of braids and tooth gaps
Free of cares and stress
Back to when my parents were together
Back to when the scariest thing
Was tripping on the sidewalk
Or maybe the clowns
I miss holding hands with both my parents
I miss dancing about freely
Where did the days
Of hope and make believe disappear to
Where is my tooth gap
Where are my braids

I've heard of men
Dying at war
Answering nations call
Or coming back
With a burden
Known as PTSD.

I've heard of hearts
Bursting from hatred
Flames igniting monks
To defend what is sacred
I've heard of hearts
Healing from love
And flames burning
For progression of
A society.

I've heard of people dying
At a battlezone whilst
Watching the alive
Die with them,
All suffering the same fate
Yet I'd never imagined
That racism somehow survived
Kept breathing and alive
By bigots who have no better cause
To fight for.
Racism somehow survived
By the flames that burnt
Destruction upon society
Rather than progression,
Racism somehow survived
As though bigots
Lacked the knowledge of sobriety,
Left their brain intoxicated
From all the colors they hated
Till they became rotten.
How the **** did racism survive,
When we couldn't even bring our soldiers home alive?

I want to say I love you but
I don't know where the line cuts
Between liking you
And loving you
Between beating red blood
Or beating blue,
I'm confused
Over what's the correct hue
Because when I say I love you,
What does that mean to you?

Does I love you
Mean I'll end up wifing you
Or we'll make one from two.
Does I love you
Means if you speak your words
Like 'wash the dishes' they'll be heard
Or is it more of a proverb,
'Like you can lead a horse to the lake
But you can't make him drink the water'.

I think my I love you
Is a complete different view,
It's a taste
Of sweet sugar on a rainy day,
The taste
Of cake eaten yesterday,
It's sweet.
It's more than sweet though,
It's a sight,
It's an array of lights to form a show
Like how I'll show you my life lighting up
When you repeat those same I love you's.
My I love you's
Is a sound
Not the rattling of chains
To keep two souls bound
But the sounds of bells
That gets dented and dinged by cupids arrows.
My I love you's
Is the smell of fresh roses
That tickles the noses
And shows how I'll keep you closest.
My I love you's
Are more than that,
Because even I don't know my I love you's
Because it's a sentence
I haven't put meaning to,
Not until I finally met you.

Being fine with being you,
It's not a struggle that is new,
We battle the demons inside,
Ever since we were five,
Keeping them alive,
By feeding them insecurities,
They need to survive.

Unhappy with our own bodies,
As though big thighs,
Meant being ostracized,
I personally prefer bigger thighs,
Not for the thought of bearing child,
But that they are fine not living lies,
That they could flaunt their mind,
Above the shallow part that is their body.

I remember one day of school,
Being in a restroom, peeing in a ******,
Clinging onto my exposed genital,
A boy who gazed upon my manhood,
Tell me that I was made wrong.
That because my genitals wasn't long,
Somehow I was never right,
Between being too white,
Being an ugly sight,
Regarding my genitals I didn't give a *****.

So purposely I burnt myself on sunlight,
Days out in the open sun in hopes for a tan,
And that was when it finally began.
Words of how I might get skin cancer,
If I ever wanted to get any tanner,
And yet I still took the risk,
Because being accepted for being darker,
Meant being more spiderman less Peter Parker.

Now that I am where I am,
I am fine with who I am,
Because who I am,
Is a path I can't escape,
So I embrace it,
And even if I wore no cape,
Was no superhero to others,
Was different to another,
I was finally able to be more me,
And less like others.
What's good about being a white sheep,
Be a unicorn, be a black sheep,
Because people never count on black sheeps,
To fall asleep.

You are you,
You are beautiful,
You are amazing,
You are you.
And
You are perfect.