I brought you a daisy
Because that was the name of my dog
And one of my favorite literary characters.
I came up, let the light shine in
And now you're alone.
I wore my necktie made of rope;
I was ready to die,
But not ready to choke.
And when they found you in that hotel room
I flashed back to the days I spent
Locked away with the speech team
In rooms very similar to the one
Your life escaped you in.
Would holding my hand have made it easier?
If I would have talked to you more often
Would your quality of living been better?
I do not condemn you for your actions,
For I am surprised that I survived my own turmoil,
Grazing through with nothing but a nicotine addiction
And the tendency to lay awake
When sleeping in someone else's bed.  
I am ashamed to say
That I was not by your side for your departing lessons.
Would it have made it easier if I had talked more?
If instead of repressing my worlds
I had shared them with you?
It was easy to assume that you didn't care much for me
Because you moved far away and no one knew why.
No one knew about the twenty-six year old man
Beating and threatening your gorgeous existence.
Not one of us could have come to know
The parasite growing in your guts and veins.
I remember the day when we were five,
You splashed my outfit with dark and sticky mud
And I told you that I hoped you died...
Our mothers laughed.
But the other day I saw your mother weep because my prophecy
Had come true.
The only movie I have ever seen
Depict eye make up melting accurately was the movie that played
For me as I knelt at your casket.
So I brought you a Daisy
Because there was a Rosary in your hand
I didn't want to taint.
And I prayed to the God I did not care for in that moment
That you would make it to where ever you were going
Safely at least.

I still want to hold your hand.

I'll let you take pictures of other girls in their bras
And I'll never quite get over it.
And I'll let you sleep all through the night
And I won't say a word when I'm feeling left out.
But I'll save all those rocks in a little purple
Crown Royal bag on a tack in my room.
And I'll throw those rocks at you when push comes to shove.
But I won't tell you how I'm feeling, I won't
Let you know how I've been doing
Because I'm your little princess and you
Expect me to be happy
But I'm not.
I always order too much
Food to handle and I
Pay for movies with a gun
Stuck in my back because I'll never watch them
But isn't it nice to think that I'll have a way
To stay sane in the case of a catastrophe?
Isn't it nice to say that I'll be able to
Mask my self indulgence in
Cigarette smoke and bad puns?
I hate myself, I hate myself,
I hate myself for engulfing myself in this load of *******
But I didn't ask to be born.
If I had it my way I would have been a wasted mess in a ******,
A wasted race in a piece of latex
Because I hate myself and that won't change.
I want to go to Chuck E Cheese
But I'm a hundred and twelve percent sure that
I won't fit the tubes.
I'm the lost cause of the century,
A piece lost in the puzzle.
The piece you dropped while making love
Underneath the covers
With that ***** you call a friend who's really just
Out for blood.
I want you to see, oh how I want you to see,
That you're a ******* and she's a ****
But you're building your castles and I'm just
Sending smallpox-ridden corpse heads over the fence.
I've never put my lips to the bottle because I'm tired
Of people using ales and hard ciders as excuses
Because we were all born once and we'll all die
But these people won't even let the most solemn of us
Dream.
Why can't you let the solemn ones sleep?
I've gotten older and I long for deeper things
But I'm a casket in the courtyard,
Not the body so much as the casing
Of a human bullet heading straight into your back.
I'm the whiskey in your glass, the nicotine of a cigarette,
So addicting but so remorseful.
I am the unwritten play,
Waiting for the day in which I'm published
But I'm ahead of my time and no one will do it.
But at least I'm in love with the best of the best
Because I know that at least if I **** up,
I'll still be loved deeper and more succulently than any of you losers.
I'm that geek who sits with a plate of food in front of them
But doesn't eat.
I don't care if my games don't come with the instruction manuals,
I'm all right with the value of being incomplete.
I'm intelligent because I see all these maddening things.
I'm the better person because I am walked on.
I am the queen of my own kingdom
And I'll have my king by my side through and through.

And I find myself alone,
Brought to this place
Where we threw cigarette butts
Down the storm drain.
I feel the memory of you drowning
Inside of me.
Breathless, reaching,
I hear church bells ringing and tinging.
I think for a moment
That you're God might be on my side tonight.
I remember vividly your fear of heights
And popping balloons
And I sigh through pursed lips.
Why in the end did we become adventurers of a lost faith?
You and I,
We should have listened when the philosophers told us
That God was dead.
Because instead tonight I feel cheated
And disbarred.

1.
I have been told
That I am too pretty to smoke.
I did not understand what he meant by this
Because I knew plenty of beautiful girls who smoked
And their boyfriends did not comment
On their vices, instead, only on their virtues.
Then I understood
That he was remarking on my insides-
My lungs and my horribly scarred soul.

2.
I didn't know anything about Batman.
I asked him about Bruce Wayne once
And was called a ******* idiot.
Now Batman scares me
And makes my stomach twinge
Because I feel guilty
For not knowing who he was,
I am a ******* idiot.

3.
Your mother loved Reagan
And I told her that he was
A dishonest, morally twisted pig
Who sat back
While thousands of Americans
Succumbed to a disease
Who's name was whispered
On the winds of her generation.
I don't think your mother likes me much anymore.
I think she may get in our way later on.
I wish she and I
Didn't care so much about Ronald Reagan.

4.
You told me about Joy Division
And I thought it was beautiful
That Ian Curtis hung himself in his kitchen
for his wife to find
And later had the words
"Love will tear us apart"
Inscribed on his headstone.
You called me cryptic
And then assaulted me in the night.
You made me want to die
So I could write "love will tear us apart"
On my own headstone.

5.
He asked for **** photos
And I told him no.
Upon which I was called a ****
And demeaned during intimacy
From then on.
He taught me that virgins could be *****
And now I am the ******
Time has made into the ****
It has ****** time and again.

6.
He called Wes Anderson films "hipster garbage"
And told me instead to watch things
Like Reservoir Dogs and South Park.
A year later, I only know not to tip
And how to be an *******.

7.
You told me to grow my hair out
Because a girl with short hair
Was a lesbian and you told me
You didn't want others to think
That you were going with a lesbian.
But in the end you still pulled it
With regular fierceness
And I was too much of a coward
To tell you to eat ****.

And I would just like to assume
That no matter the age difference between the parents,
My children be blessed with ones who love and cherish;
Rather than ones who are close in experience,
Who command the household like tyrants
And make their children bleed at the seams.

I would just like to know that through the flower of my love
A courageous seed may be planted,
One that will outwit the darkness
And fight on to a world of light in which
Love is simply that and
Assumptions are kept in the minds of tyrants.

Shortly after the school systems began defecating on the dreams of my generation,
We found different outlets
Through which we could bring our loathing to a head.
My generation now writes poetry and
Finds solace in video games we can beat
In lives we can't seem to live the right way.

It's funny to me that The Legend of Zelda,
When completed,
Tells you that "You are great!"
While your teacher berates you for being sub-par
Though you tried your damnedest
To please them through drafts and drafts
And drafts of work
Spat out at 4am because
There are more important things to deal with
In regular waking hours,
In regular waking life.

They tell us that we have failed
Because we ****** up in one class,
A single credit,
A single number on a sheet of paper
That tries to measure us
When we can't even attempt to do the same.
They tell us we have failed
Because we do not look good on file
And apparently we do not look good
Walking down the street
With ****** eyes and baggy sweaters,
The only clean clothes we own
Because the system has ****** us clean of time
To do much else than
Study, study, STUDY our **** lives away.

This is atrocious.
When a young boy feels more accomplished
Beating Pokemon
Than he does when he writes a stellar paper,
The best he can pen
Only to be told he has a lot more work to do
And that the paper
"Is good...
But it needs work."

The culture of my generation does not discriminate.
It does not tell us that we have more work to do.
Instead, it tells us that "we are great" and
It gives us a restart screen when we **** up beyond repair.
It does not tell us we have failed,
Instead offers us a kind
"Try again?"

It is sad
When the voice over of a video game
Offers more kindness
Than our instructors and parents
Combined.

School should not send us home, wanting to **** ourselves.
The system should not make a pen cap,
A pair of underpants, a simple metal bookmark
A weapon
In the hands of the human entity of depression.

We will not be marked suicide risks.
As long as we keep getting our restart screens and
Compliments from bits,
We will triumph.
We will be the heroes of our generation
As long as we keep getting the chance.

One day, when all the suffering is over
And we have escaped this war-torn soul of "The Caring Community,"
Maybe those words will extend from an NES and find their way
Into the mouth of a boyfriend, girlfriend,
Wife, husband, friend, professor...

Someday, we will hear the words and we will truly believe them.

"You are great!"

Maybe not today...

But someday.

Soon.

I was not the one who lost your ******* daughters shoes.
I did not force you
To have *** with a man
Who you viewed as a mistake in the first place;
I did not force you to **** him,
Sans ******
And bring me into the world.

***** do not know what they are racing to
And if they did,
I can assure you that no one,
No one
Would be here today.

I did not tie your tubes
And force you to raise three children
When you are still a child yourself,
Unaware of the grace of JFK
And knowledge of basic admiration
That fuels the care of this world.

I did not make you become void and listless,
I did not make you my personal servant
Rather, you made me yours.
I did not ask for such torture as this,
Bleeding my veins through everything,
Loving me only when you are out of smokes
And want a cigarette.

I did not ruin your life
And I did not waste my time
Trying to make you happy through these years.
I attempted to better myself
All the while looking at you for reference.

Do not blame me
And look at me as if I were a criminal
When I pack up my things
And run, run
Run the hell away from you.

Because I was not the one who ****** up in the first place.
I was not the one
Who lost your ******* daughters shoes.