When I was young high school kid
I wasn’t doing very well with girls
I didn’t know what to say to them
But I really wanted to give it a whirl.
So, when Mama saw me struggling
She saw me blowing my chance
She told me, “They’ll come around,
All you have to do is learn to dance.”

So, she showed me some rather easy
Stylish steps from her jitterbug days
I took them and danced to the music
That the deejays chose to play.

Mama taught me jitterbug
And that helped quite a bit
She won awards as a teen
I heard she was quite a hit.

I rocked and I rolled and bounced
My shoes got to moving with the beat.
Then I was snapping my fingers and
My body went along with my feet.
I twirled the girls I danced with and
Held them snuggly up close and tight.
And the girls started asking me to dance
Right away from that very first night.

Mama taught me jitterbug
And I very glad she did
It turned a geeky wallflower
Into a much more popular kid.

I learned the Stroll and Hully Gully
The UT and the Electric Slide
With a changing bevy of beauties
Dancing along right by my side.
This was before Twist showed up
Which everybody could learn to do
But even then I found that I could
Teach them another trick or two.

Mama taught me jitterbug
And that helped quite a bit
She won awards as a teen
I heard she was quite a hit.

Just hear me out,
Before you get frustrated.
Lol
One of the new most commonly used terms in a teen’s vocabulary.
***
The new starter of most sentences in a text message.
Put them together,
You have a full sentence.
Wow, magic.
Just like that!
But then you have jk jk lol.
Brb.
Ttyl.
And those don’t even scrape the beginning of “text language”
Whatever happened to the real languages?
The real conversations?
See the thing is, most of us couldn’t go a day without our electronics.
Are world is digitally ruled.
When you feel your phone buzz, what do you do?
You immediately go for it.
When you hear your ringtone, what do you do?
You go for it.
I’m sure we’re all guilty of it.
We text, we post, we call.
Our life story.
Whatever happened to going outside to play football?
Because now it can be done on Madden.
With the touch of a button,
Our whole life can be occupied, mixed, and transformed.
Cyber bullying.
Plagiarism.
Pirating.
All crimes based on technology.
Our world has turned to the future,
When maybe it should’ve stayed in the past.
It’s become like a bird, flying too fast.
It seems like our lives have begun to revolve around when the next IPhone comes out.
Did you know a girl tried to **** her own mom when she took away her phone?
There’s clearly something wrong there.
We stare at our screens,
Like we owe them respect,
But then we forget
The color of our lover’s eyes.
Video games,
The love in a teens life.
How fun it seems
To build, destroy, and plat
But we forget, what it was really like
When these things required work, and energy.
This generation has relied too much on our everyday actions.
We don’t do anything new.
We haven’t done anything new…
Except when we got the new ps4 and the new IPhone 6 plus of course.
I feel like my world has been taken over.
The tyrant is the tech.
And its trapped me for years.
Its trapped schools, workplaces.
Its trapped the world.
And I don’t know how…
Oh wait…was that my phone?
It’s taken over our banking, our transportation, even our security!
We trust our tech more than our best friend!
And it doesn’t even have a soul!
In fact, that’s how we reach most people.
Social media.
Ah there it is.
Facebook
Twitter
Snapchat
And Instagram.
The addiction is real.
We check them every day.
Every night.
Memories fade to the rapid typing and clicking.
My parents laugh
When they see something from their childhood,
That I don’t even recognize.
And I ask myself, will our children be the same?
So oblivious to everything,
Because we never bothered to see?
We text. We type.
We can do it all night.
When will our thumbs get tired?
Because when you power your phone on,
I’m trying to turn mine…off.
Hold on, I gotta take this call.

The corner house
Has three missing fence planks,
So the boys got their short-cut
Across the front lawn.
It was three a.m.,
I saw them, I yelled from the window,
Hey guys. Stop that!
They tossed their cans onto the asphalt.
Her bedroom light came on;
They were the night.
I heard their hurried pace,
Their laughter like warning fog horn blasts.

Butch's mother next door died.
It was a year before I knew.
I thought she went to Florida.
I pictured her sitting in the sun.
But she was gone.
Butch shovels snow,
Obsessively.
That's what I know.

The doobie brothers
Live next to the cop.
Their driveway's a busy spot with comings,
And goings.
But the cop's part of our hood,
Disrection's understood.
Besides,
Officer Bob has his troubles to tend to.

Then there's small Mary,
She lives two doors down.
She has to be over a hundred,
Once lived on a farm.
She rakes debris with her hands,
Bent over for hours,
Cleaning her lawn.
     (Butch shovels her walkway,
     but stays to himself)
I've waved to Mary
When she's out and about.
Good to see you, I shout.
Nice to be seen, she replies.
No doubt.

How can one be simultaneously emotionally barren yet still feel?
When it all comes to a crescendo and the ****** is resolved
I find a sweet release coupled with a bitter after taste
As the fascinating flavor remains constant on my tongue
I try to release, to interpret, to feel, to taste normally
To rid my tongue, my heart, of this inevitable condiment
Yet it remains, it lingers, as thorn in my neck

To remind me of the days of frolicking in the garden
And of being the one red rose in a field of weeds
But pity did I know, that my leaves fell, my petals became discolored, and my stem leaned to a side
And soon I too was encompassed in weeds
Pity did I know, that all the weeds I saw before, were once roses
How ironic
And I join them as another arises
One that started as a suspicious bud
Yet it blossomed unbothered
And became a beautiful white rose, in a field of weeds.

we're young and we're sad
let's all just go mad
let's just dance in the rain
to erase our pain
let's go insane and drive
in the wrong road lane
let's drink the night away
until we all go crazy and
become lazy the next day
let's sit on our lawns and smoke
until it's dawn
we don't need therapy or
sympathy or people trying to
go the extra mile telling
us to fake it and smile,
we're young and we're sad
i know that's bad
but eh,
let's all just go mad.

All they see
Is,
The me who knows biology
And science stuff.

All they see
Is,
The me who knows nothing about art
Or humanity.

..the me who's in her teenage years.

I wish they want to see me as more than that, really.

The laughed at me when I told them my ambition,
My dream job:
"I want to be an author."

My dreams and hopes. . .

I just want to see a better world,
Where
Young boys and girls have their chances to speak their minds;
Where their opinions are being considered;
Or at least,
Respected.