I grew up in suburbia-
With picket fences as white as the faces
Who say they're godly enough to save babies
(As long as they're not queer)
Because we don't have to live with the fear
Of corpses lining the sidewalks
Of our perfectly landscaped yards
We have no guards firing on peaceful protestors
Because our children are filed into orderly lines
Laid out for them at birth
But for what it's worth, we teach them of racism
From a white textbook that lies about founding fathers
Where segregation is just a word and
Oppression is hardly even mentioned.
Our children, who play at the age of 6
And lose their innocence at the age of 16
Suburbia is a life of it's own,
Gangly arms and legs
Like the teenagers who starve themselves
And steal their parents liquor
Just to get drunk quicker
Ignorant of those on the streets dying of hunger
No wonder I yearn to be far from this hell I call home.

Allen Ginsberg once said
“America I’ve given you all and now I am nothing”
The Wonder Years once said
“Suburbia I’ve given you all and now I am nothing”
But I’ve found fallacies in both of these,
I feel it’s more like
Suburbia I’ve given you all
And now I’m an awkward 20 year old
Who doesn’t know how to talk to black people
Suburbia I’ve given you all
And now I’m way too confident walking around the city at night
Because I forget there are communities
Where people actually have to lock their doors,
Suburbia I’ve given you all
And now I have a 16 year old brother
Who thinks the word *** and **** jokes are funny
Suburbia I've given you all
And now my father hates that I'm for gender equality
Well dear daddy,
I hope this offends you.

Because I am offended
By a community that tells **** victims they were asking for it
I am offended by a community
That tells my best friend Liam
That he's just confused, that
His love for Adam is an abomination
I am offended by a community
That offers equality as thinly veiled oppression,
With houses decorated in the decadence of degradation,
All the while their perfect sons and daughters
Are dying of depression because
The hilt of a gun is so much quicker
Than the drugs of their addiction

Suburbia, you are the seed of suicide
Feeding off of your violent silence,
Your white fences slice our tongues
And leave us mindless.
Suburbia, you have betrayed us.
Taught us ignorance is bliss with
Algebra instead of how to do taxes,
Spent more time worried about
Girls' shoulders instead of *** education,
Taught me not to speak unless
My hand was raised as if praise
Is given to authority without question,
Funny how they forgot to mention
Our country was founded on rebellion.

But suburbia, I forgive you
And so I humbly ask of you,
Find the keys of compassion within the heart and
Shed the lock of ignorance that grips your mind
The door may be rusted but it can open with time
Suburbia, I beg of you
Join us in the war of love
Let us all raise our fists and
Paint peace signs on our wrists,
We are disobedient dandelions swaying in the sun,
Words of kindness rolling off our tongues
Like pacifistic shots of a gun
Firing respect instead of rounds
And burying hate instead of bodies in the ground.

I beg you,
Do not make this out to be a love note;
Do not romanticise my words
     until a list of all that is wrong with you
          becomes a letter in a bottle, washed up on an island’s shore.
Do not teach the child I will never have
     that the locked wooden box of dated but unsent letters hidden beneath her bed
          will one day become a novel.
They are all addressed to you--
   just as every thought I think echoes with your name
              every song is about you
              every tear burns my skin with the acidity of your touch
         the smoke from
              every cigarette tastes of you.
It is you.
It is you
             who is the black mist enveloping my lungs from the inside out,
It is you
             swirling in my hollow veins
                as they wrap themselves like chains
                   around my organs, screaming for night,
and you capture my beating heart.


And it is you
     who tells us to teach our children
                         to make sure to say their pleases and their thank-yous,
And we taught them not to talk to strangers,
  but we never taught them to say
                                                      ‘no’. --
Now I don’t speak to the kids hanging out on the corner
And I don’t speak to the man when he pulls up his van,
And now I don’t speak
                                  when I'm lying in bed
you never taught me to say no
I don’t speak when your hand runs down my body
          like I am something you own
          like my bones are the ivory keys of a grand piano
               and you must hit every note on your glissando
descending
   to
hell.



I don’t speak as you wrap yourself around me
metal chains on a summer’s day
I close my eyes
            and listen to my organs screaming for night
                   like a child who just wants her bedtime story,
                                                          ­   her mummy to come home,
                   like a child who is not afraid
                               of monsters in her head,
                          or of monsters under the bed,
                          or of you,
Lying
     beside her.


And we scream for night
   And we close our eyes
      And we float up into a moonless sky.
The definition of a black hole is
               ‘a region of space having a gravitational field so intense that no matter or radiation can
                escape’.
If it is the matter that creates the pull that traps the matter,
   then you are not so much in me
         and I am not so much in you
               as we are trapped inside each other.
The world made up of people and
      people made up of world,
                                          like Romeo and Juliet,
      we do not exist without the other,
                                          you and I.


For the words
           immorality and immortality
                                            may be frighteningly similar, but there is a difference between
                 apathy and anaesthesia;
I do not close my eyes to shut you out,
           I close my eyes because it is only darkness that can make the space between my bedroom walls appear infinite;
           It is only music that lets me hear your screams as you suffocate mine;
                  only smoke that lets me taste your toxicity as my ashes spread like a virus through your veins.


I want to die.
And I'm taking you down with me,
   So don’t you dare tell me to teach the child I will never have
      that her scars seek attention,
         or that she needs them as proof of what you have done to her mind;
   Don’t you dare teach us that the rope from which we hang is a diamond necklace;
          that corpses are more beautiful when drained of blood,
             that we are more beautiful when broken.


Dear world,
   I beg you,
Do not make this out to be a love note;
Do not romanticise my words
     until a list of all that is wrong with you
          becomes a letter in a bottle, washed up on an island’s shore.
Do not teach me that my suicide note is poetry
     when our existence is intertwined
          and my death is yours,
          and you are too cowardly to do it for the both of us,
  but, darling,
                    so am I.
So please,
   I beg you,
You can make this out to be a love note,
                                             a letter in a bottle,
   just close your eyes;
      float up into a moonless sky;
         dissolve into infinity.
                                            Die with me--.
                                                           ­                                                       *j.s.

Because no matter how hard I try, no matter how many times I rub my eyes and try to look at it again, I still see that the small things I do has nothing compared to the size of what others can create and have mastered. Comparing just can't be helped.
You know what? You have managed to prove to me that it's better being alone than to try being around people. I don’t need to hear lies while reading my science fiction novel. I don't need to see fake smiles when I watch cartoons. People these days must be incapable of being aware of someone's important presence.  A certain someone who wants to be heard because the blood in them boils and cleanses dirt to the top of my brain and clogs my heart. The way I work every waking moment with my hands craving the board to wood shavings  to be noticed. The way I open both my time, time he can never spend again for myself under that Narra tree I love, and money; Money that he earned by setting aside a coin per day.  
Accepted? I think you just want to finish a good deed out of nothing. Please don't lie to me. Please. I know how sad I am and I won't recover because there are a lot of people like you. The world thrives in this form of self-pity. There are a lot who get away with it. Believe me. I see it now and every day. Every single charity time.  At one point, you will always go together and I will always be alone. You will never get to that end with me because you stop it with your circles. You stop it together. You left it at that.
And now....I only wish to die...To die slowly and to know that I don’t need to do anything about it. The way I was given cake. It had corners for others. You could turn it to see other names. You are exclusive. It wasn't special. It was trick. I was abandoned.
You call me selfish? And even after all the times were I was singled out by your dates and the way you would mouth yourselves in time wrapped in spending talks and little footprints to cover your tracks. Yet you still dare to call me selfish. I? I am dying. I am dying because of the air you breathe. The air that you use to laugh in and breathe into a joke or loud noises of whatever shoe or color your hair could be. I needed it to survive. I needed it to stay alive. I want to help those , in fact, those who are like me dying slowly from the air that was once there’s and now revolves around the popular. And you have the gull, the audacity? The stubborn seedlingness..to call me selfish?!
Yes. I want to explode. I want the noise to be heard but then when you come to look for its origin, you will find no trace. I want the outward noise to block the concrete sound of your rash and irrational blurt outs because you care about the others that are your other halves. Me? You will never find me. I. Am. Done. Gone.
And Well played.

Once upon a time, a man once said aloud for all to hear:
"There is no need for poetry."
Once upon a time, he was right.
When the darkest nights fall upon us
like a barrage of arrows
we would rather just survive.
We strive to one day have a future
where there is no doubt, but
until that last creative ember in our souls is
snuffed out, we will have a need for poetry.

Because what are these words if not
just scrap paper floating on the breeze?
What is this idea if not
just one seed among a million trees?
What is this level of depth
when measured to the deepest seas?
We live in a society where wit is defined
by how well you can put someone down...
A society where smiles/frowns,
whichever it is, they are just masks.
Hiding who we truly are.
Each one of us is a star,
some brighter than others,
but each of us beautiful and powerful in our own right
and in spite of our differences.

On many a night
I would have extinguished my own flame
just to be able to name myself a martyr.
A martyr who died fighting his demons
and whether or not I will ever win,
I'll always be aware of it's futility.
But, you see, it's never like I ever had false visions
of putting this to rest.
It never was a battle between 'good' and 'bad'...
only shades of better or worse.

And yet we would stuff our one hope
against this darkness into a funeral hearse
and wave it on it's way.
With not even a hint of dismay,
I ask you all,
is there any need for poetry?

Up here, I feel like I can open up my soul to you.
Show you who I really am.
Through each word and pause
I have encurred the awes of people
I never thought could appreciate me.
So let us let this tragedy unfold.
Who knows what the future could hold...
or what it could let go.

You aren't the first to walk these roads.
These lonely, gravel trails  covered in broken glass and nails.
Every time a rickety car breaks down and fails
it leaves it's wreck along the side of highway,
just watching the traffic pass them by.
They are monuments to every effort we have made and given up on.
They are why you MUST try.

Whether you live in a town or a city,
there are going to be some pretty ****** moments in life.
It takes a lot of strife to get a small amount of satisfaction
but the chain reaction
of doubts and down 'n' outs
is drowned out by the radio static and
I don't mean to sound dramatic but
I understand.

I just want you to know
you're not going to go on your own this time.
Every moment spent crying is time that could better spent trying.
If I told you I don't have these moments,
well, I'd be lying.
Because I've felt the color drain from my face
as I try to remember the last place I left my courage
because it's not at arm's reach this time.
Sneers and eyerolls draw spirals around me
like I'm at ground zero of an M.C Escher painting.

I can rephrase suffering so many ways.
But at this pace, I still can't outrun my own thoughts.
I find my courage at last
but there is no sticking place to ***** it to,
so I just say "***** it."
I can't say I knew it would end this way,
but if all this poem comes down to
is a whiny teenager trying to be edgy
than I guess I...

Echoing in a room of memories
Struggling to understand themselves
Words stuck on a ruined tongue
Aiming to become anew
Benefits of a scam
Of a game
Of a plan
But the benefits of a failure?
That's one to undermine your proficiency
Not excluding the fact that your allocation of thoughts are all over the place
Varying off center
Unintended
But carried efficiently
Like the assumption of happiness
Of trust and honesty
Subtle hints that should not be ignored
Regardless of the fact that you're in another's door
And i'm highlighting the points that should have stood out
The warnings
The symbols
Screaming, get out.