What is the point?
Was I just put here to sit through classes and
understand information I will never use?
I want to be useful
MEANINGFUL
Give me something to believe in
To be passionate about
That MATTERS
Not just to me
But the world
I want to leave something for when I die
So I can be remembered
So my life matters more than just barely outside myself
I need purpose.
I need meaning.
Because if I don’t
Why am I even here?

“What do you even have to worry about?”

“High school was so fun!
Why do you say you hate it?
Don’t be so dramatic.”

They tell me.
But then they go on, after they see my grades

“You’re not even trying!
Just study harder!
Oh, but you can’t take normal classes, no.
We want you to take all honors.
Honors classes are better for you.”

“You have a D in College Algebra??
That’s unacceptable.
You’re grounded.
Until you can get your score up, of course.”

Is what they tell me.
You wonder why I hate school?
It’s because it *****.
It teaches you that if you make mistakes you’re worthless.
And If you don’t get that letter up to an A you won’t get into a good college,
You won’t get a good job,
You won’t earn good money,
You won’t be able to live,
Not that (dare I say) a fourth of us even want to.

Did you know,
That the average kid in high school has the same level of anxiety
As the average insane asylum patient in the 1950’s?

It’s a ******* problem.

And don’t read an article about it,
Written by a Millennial,
Read by a Baby Boomer,
About the problems of a generation
That they don’t know.

I’m sick of it.

What do I have to worry about?

I have to worry about my future.
I have to worry about it every waking hour of my life.
I have to stress,
And agonize,
And internally SCREAM about it.

Because of how hard it is.

And I can’t “live in the present,”
Because I have no time
To do trivial things (without feeling like a failure).

I have no time,
To get the “eight hours of sleep your child needs” every night,
Because I’m doing homework,
Or crying,
Or procrastinating,
Because I know I can’t do it.
I just can’t make myself.

And I wish they’d be a little less disappointed in me,
Because It’ll never compare to how disappointed I am in myself.

I am often too hot and too cold at the same time.

But I'd prefer a negative view of myself to a false one every time.

It is a heavy thing to be caught in the gravity of two great cosmic forces. Greatness and obscurity--how they rend the soul caught in their tidal struggle.

Truth and perception how great a chasm between you and how many black bodies have been broken by the Fall to the bottom like a lead-fed whip laying into history's backside laying open our hopes and dreams, exposing love to unseasonable air. It spoils in light obscured by empire's greed.

I can't tell what's real. I don't know how to dress for this.

Aurora, it needs a break.
After years of sailing, it could no longer fake.

Ardour could only go so far,
antithetical to talent and holding
ace.

All encouraged in good grace,
Almost there. They prevaricate, clearly did not
anticipate.

A few had a slice of the honest cake, un-
aware of how they caused an
ache.

'Aye! What absurd thoughts, mate.'
Annoyed by the voice inside create,
as the pirate couldn't tell.
A message from garden or well,
are solid facts or silly doubts?

Aquivering, he supined on deck.
Anxious, desperately he seeks for his
answer. Impatiently he awaits for his
anchor.

Siren wails
One stranger about to take his final breath
Eyes gazing at familiar faces
Piercing through souls
Melancholia reverberates
I can’t save him…

Raising flags
Amid the morning dew
Inquisitive minds of the youth
Along the misty garden of roses
Wisdom routs ignorance
I can’t teach them…

Pompous buildings rise
Along the busy traffic of the north
Breathtaking visions realized
Through pens and grids
Gasping folks looking up and passing by
I can’t build them…

Splattered blood
In the streets of darkness
One innocent life forsaken
One fatherless son
Can justice be given?
I can’t defend him…

Who am I?
Why am I here?
What does living mean?
Is life naturally chaotic? Empty?
A whirlwind of doubts
Blocked the future they envisioned

I couldn’t save him.
I couldn’t teach them.
I couldn’t build them.
I couldn’t defend him.
This life swims in the pool of regrets
Where this aimless mind drowns in oblivion

And there in the midst of nothingness,
I found myself...

(i'm 42% sure
i don't exist.)

intensely greased
plastic hair
secondhand green day
coldplay in the rain

i love the sound
that waxed paper
deli sheets make
and i could choke
on a glassed reflection
of celery salts and windex.

(i'm 42% sure
i don't exist
because when i look into
my eyes i see someone else)

i'm not catholic
and do not
understand who
st. peter is

but i wonder if he won't let
us into heaven because we're
failures or if we're failures
because he won't let us into heaven

(i'm 42% sure
i don't exist
and questioning how
bad hell can really be.)

too quiet for a saturday
i wrote the word
decaf so many times i
forgot how to spell it

decaf
decaf
decaf
decaf

(does decaf
have two f's?
because i don't have
two f's to give anymore
i mean i would but
i can't even find
vowels much less
extra consonants)

when i was a child
i always counted in
mississippis
now that i'm older i
find myself counting in
cappuccinos

i dreamed my
legs were bleeding
and i remembered
that they're not

i want so badly
just to sleep in
a bag of crystallized
ginger and swim
in a mixing bowl of
tasteless tea.

(i can't tell what's
real anymore
but i'm 42%
sure that i am not.)

Let's say
Hypothetically
Someone was
Keeping score
And I had a
Perfect
Unsurpassed
Record.

In that case
There would be
Three hundred and twelve
Pieces of paper
Somewhere
In my house with
Five to thirteen lines of
Text on each of them.

And then suppose
Five and thirteen averaged
Out to somewhere between
Seven and eight.

Then do the math
And tell me what seven or eight
Times three hundred and twelve is
And then think about how
For each line of text on each
Sheet of paper
There is another
Sheet of paper in some
Binder somewhere
Or a pile in the righthand
Corner of my room.

And remember
I'm just one person.

And then think
About the butterfly effect.

Do you know
What happens
In the mail room
When you're not around?

Do you know
Who uses the copier
In the dead of night
Or the morning dawn?

Do you know
Where we go
When we
Die?

Or even
Why we're
All alive
To begin with?

It's sure
As hell

(Or should I say
As unsure as hell
Because no one can
Agree on anything
Even a universal a
Concept as hell)

That we're not living
To make paper
To print out our
Personal whims on.

And then think
About the butterfly effect.