"dropouts" poems
People say that I'm not the average black girl...
And I don't know whether to take that as an insult or a compliment
Am I not the average black girl because I am so well-spoken?
The fact that I am able to articulate my words...
Or that if a person misuses a word that I simply correct them?
Am I not the average black girl because I don't wear a weave in my hair with noticeable tracks?
Or that instead of me shaking my *** for the world to see...
I choose to make something of myself without diminishing myself?
Am I not the average black girl because I chose a path different from the other black girls...
The path of the dropouts, and being baby mamas at the age of 16...
What is the average black girl?
To me, there is no such thing as the average black girl...
The word "average" is what society has pegged a black girl as being the norm of what black girls are seen as or are supposed to be.
But me, I'm just a black girl
May 19, 2015
May 19, 2015 at 2:02 PM UTC
*My dad broke my heart
Way before a guy had the chance to
*Kids who have holes in their souls
In the shape of their dad. And
If a father is unwilling or
Unable to fill that hole, it can
Leave a wound that is not
Easily healed
-Roland Warren
*71% of high school
Dropouts in the United States come
From fatherless homes
*A man ain't
**** if he's
No father
To his
Children
A fathers hurt
isn't the childs responsibility
Oct 5, 2014
Oct 5, 2014 at 7:15 PM UTC
cold sweats
heart pounding
wide awake
early morning
can't sleep
you decide
these nightmares need to end.
but your subconscious
disagrees
in its own
subtle-as-a-kick-in-the-teeth
sort of way.
tomorrow is another day,
another nightmare
to wake up from.
in class they all stare at you
because aren't you a little too
poor
to be in college?
that's when you wake up
and that's when you decide
these nightmares need to end
but dreams weren't meant for
dropouts
like you
so tomorrow it's back
to the
cold sweats
heart pounding
wide awake
early morning
can't sleep
won't sleep
ever again.
Nov 20, 2011
Nov 20, 2011 at 8:35 PM UTC
I.
AM.
A.
Piece of ****
Here's how i roll.
I plop the excrement, directly in the pool.
I **** on chairs,
This is where i place stool.
Plip plob drop loads,
Crenated blood cells and lymphatic drool.
Hurt my kidneys in a fight with truth the other night.
7 brutal, flooring uppercuts to the Latisimus dorsi....
I am > "this girl"
That one that's taken more hits in the face than Tyson.
The one that makes Jenna and Sunni Leone look like pre-school dropouts of ****
Guys say.
"She"
"got the,"
"best head."
She has nothing in it though.
Her brain's finished by the time words leave her lips whole.
thats as far as it gets
the words pass her **** then she falls, grab her hips.
Prepare the sword for the stone.
The one with the baby whole in her dome.
She's not good, much else.
Her black hair and wisdom lines go bout as deep as her shirt.
Depending on the day.
Pervert.
Lets do ANOTHER line.
"Oh My GOD!" "We did so much *******
Coke in cans.
Filled with whiskey flask-hand.
"This night's gunna be one to remember",
if his member is inside, that's my gender,
Blend it with all the worst intentions,
Use the worst intentions.
Stab the heart of conviction.
Tear it to tethers with tension.
Rip the strings of friendship.
Tease the knots of frayed linen,
Like its the only thing ya got.
"I am so high right now."
I forgot what earth looks like.
Probably like my town.
Only place I've been.
I'm 17 ya see.
Its the only thing you got.
You don't deserve roses, flowers, Laurels.
No trees.
No dime bags, no speed, no crying hag.
I can sure **** 25 yearolds.
Saying your better never sounded more like a lie.
Worst thing is you have that prevarication internalized.
I have a god complex...
Wanna save em all...
Can't save a ******* one...
I did lie once...
It was...
When I told you that you weren't...
A piece of ****
Apr 13, 2013
Apr 13, 2013 at 12:58 AM UTC
Them bastardized youths fell outside, dizzied by a reality unsolved.
Their maws scowled judgment and drooled Pabst down improbable bodies each of them lay in the stink of subtle conformity.
Fiercely unique culture beasts starved away in suburbs; Wikidrifting, those drugged litterbugs scampered.
Dropout fish fast against the current of their time, tired from dancing through desperate crowded nights and disparate lonely dawns, dangling degrees and the specters of success burning incessant their pride.
They were the ******** made so over time contracted by blind parents to nine-to-blithes in which quiet desperation, credit nooses, and irony were the small print.
They were carpenters afraid of their hands. With chisel to headstone, they lied on the hoods of used Japanese cars, panning the radio for a real connection and gazing up at vanishing constellations.
They were their poison and they their elixir, but a cold cigarette was a much quicker fixer of Helplessness Blues and the back of a Bible where a brief intellectual wrote “I am suicidal.”
For how does the turn of the epigram read to those who care less with every new beat of a drummed-up society so high off its piety that seeing stars vanish is simply a shame?
Those ******** dropouts tragically remiss, those Supertramps, Kerouacs, Cohens, and wits.
They were the alternative, urbanite fools that littered alleys with Greek fables and Tibetan tattoos.
Criterion flash cards and the literary canon allowed them to flirt with god in verse and art clues until Pollock’s canvas did rip off their eyelids which left them to know only Socrates knew.
They danced and they writhed, then ****** to pass time, and kept on their passions till lost were their minds. Then they all died, those blasphemous ********
But at least they washed on the back of their crimes.
At least they danced.
At least they were.
And there may be something to movement in chaos.
Oct 29, 2012
Oct 29, 2012 at 8:06 PM UTC
This is for the doers and the seekers
the straight arrows and the tweakers
this is for the movers and the shakers
the hungry, unemployed and the money makers
this is for the girlfriends, and the secret ******
the ungentlemenly men and the ones who still hold doors
this is for listeners and the hearing deaf
the right wingers and for the liberal lefts
this is for the child who's awake at night afraid
and for the parents who'll regret not being there one day
this is for the academic scholars, and the high school dropouts
the meek, quiet talkers, and the ones who curse and shout
this is for the homeless and those braking banks to afford their mortgage rates
the healthy ones and the ones who's lives are in the hands of the fates
this is for the elderly and ones who's lives are not yet found
this is for you my brothers and sisters
for it takes all kinds to make the world go round
Jan 29, 2011
Jan 29, 2011 at 3:55 PM UTC
Dinosaur bones, discovered under an overturned rock. Dust-covered and forgotten photos in the attic. The rug pulled out from under us. Highway patrol of a distant creature. I woke up on the wrong side of a very terrible generation. Just when I thought all was good, it wasn’t. Giant ego ruined their reputation. Lost on the beaten path. My faith smells like ***** dishes. Heroes come and go; villains will always be. Dramatization of the fire. It’s up, up and away with a feeling of mutilated pasts. A young woman in a bad man’s dream. Keep a cool head while we enter the jungle. Booby-trapped instincts. This plan was doomed from the start. Let’s go back while we still have two of our appendages. The dog stares at the door, waiting for a Drunk. We both drink, but we’re not arrogant ****** The love I have for a friend of true nature. What’s that in the shadow of the empire? A rebellion. Smoke out the rat. The back door is a fire lane. A simply-put puzzle. Razorblade Cake-Mix. The sound scared the children. Candy from a stranger, candy from a friend, both will likely **** you in the terms of very end. I’ll stand on the first fallen soldier. He doesn’t know me in the meantime. A happy face for all those once told to forget it. My dignity in a department store lost-and-found. Jump for joy, parade for unemployed. A long line of henchmen waiting to be sidekicks. Watch where your education gets you when us dropouts change our pace. You’re better than no one, we’re better than no one, but we faced the facts about this a long time ago. Convincing isn’t working. A dark hole in the bottom of the bird-feeder. No more nourishment for your ill-advised brain.
Apr 8, 2012
Apr 8, 2012 at 6:17 PM UTC
We popped ourselves up to the ideas of pop culture
and adopted the looks of orphans
spray paint and swear words
too loud overcrowded mischief
the misgivings of being too young
children throwing tantrums over ice cream
calendars fell and the montage ended
we were flung across the globe as dandelion seeds
weeds to be weeded
I was playing tight rope on the fence
and fell on the side with no safety net
skinned knees and black eyes
the stoners the dropouts the thugs and **** ups
***** and *******
******* and ********
these were just words
deactivated model replicas pointed at the head
college student with a chip on the shoulder
and the one they called the jester
and the one they called the king
with return addresses tattooed on arms
the awake became the living dream
no time for nights of nightmares
enough scare to go around
pack another GB and cry some more
my blood is ink dripping from the pen
yours drips from thighs and forearms
you want to be the new thing
you forgot what the original means
and burned all of your dictionaries a while ago
check my *** cheek
the origin is there
UK/USA
now all the lights are off
and the moon hangs fat, sacrificial in the sky
do you want the moon? That’s what I’ll do. I’ll give you the moon.
Mar 27, 2014
Mar 27, 2014 at 11:49 AM UTC
Gooder and Badder
Bedder and fadder
What are Americans saying?
Boddle of wadder
Mudder and fodder
What is this game we are playing?
Funner and betterer,
Pitcher and ledder
They expect folks to unnerstan
Gimmes and wannabes
Mundees though Sundees
A hunnert and ten grand.
Gooder and Badder
Bedder and fadder
What are Americans saying?
Reedikullis and eeleegull
Furrin kinds of peepul
Should learn American English
Even when it’s ignernt,
And sounds a bit differnt,
A definite ***** to distinguish.
Boddle of wadder
Mudder and fodder
What is this game we are playing?
Inneresting innerlopers
Drunky ***** goat ropers
That’s what they think strangers are.
Our dippy high schoo dropouts
Don’t care what education’s about
And only care about today’s sports stars.
Gooder and Badder
Bedder and fadder
What are Americans saying?
Boddle of wadder
Mudder and fodder
What is this game we are playing?
May 14, 2018
May 14, 2018 at 6:50 PM UTC
All alone,
cold
desperate and confused,
my body rejects you
and so should you.
I have more,
studying
stress and anxiety,
for my brain lacks something
other than babbling.
Vocabulary,
accentuation
factitious and consternation,
I can't handle it
for I am just too dull for it.
Why need it,
with so much pain
suffering and torture,
we could do without
so we don't have dropouts.
Jan 30, 2015
Jan 30, 2015 at 6:48 PM UTC
I remember it was the middle of winter when the family I met became my only summer. The cracks and pops of the exhaust made me so deaf to the common banter, that when I heard this group from across the dive, I knew they weren’t just another group of leather-vested dropouts. Initially it was the liquor store cologne stuck in their beards that attracted me, but I stopped and stayed when they told my back how beautiful blue eyes were. In the few minutes it took to inhale a whiskey coke, they had seen the thirst I had for freedom flowing out of my pores. They said that I reminded them of those dead flies in the corner, turned over and lifeless from the exhaustion one puts themself through when trying to live life so hard and so fast. And they were right; I had made an art out of living fast and crashing hard. When the skin on my palms tore and bled all over the pavement, it was like fine art to any peanut gallery.
That was the night they taught me to ride. To unpin my curls and let them flow and crash in the wind like a desert ocean. They had found their horizon oasis in me. But Big Jimmy still hated me the most. I knew his secret and he saw that I had figured him out. He was a master at turning his cheap improperly functioning parts into his best character traits. But above everything, he let me learn that the open road will heal any scar.
I’d been at war with myself. Before I knew that a desert sunrise on chrome was the best alarm clock, I only ever thought that the way I’d wake up was with rushed embarrassment to grab the ***** tip. Big Jimmy weaseled my ****** heart out of my sunken chest, and was gettin’ twitchy now that I had my hand on his. He always said at every pit stop, life was too short for traffic. And when I stepped out of the 7/11 that chilly November morning, I could hear the sounds of distant engines, howling laughter and a single tear hitting the asphalt. I was alone again. But this time, I wasn’t at war.
Sep 5, 2013
Sep 5, 2013 at 2:38 PM UTC
3am....boom!
Door slams, feet pounding on stairs.
4am....boom!
My household remains asleep, Only me and my cares.
They come in all colors,
different flavors,
unique fears,
No status quo,
different walks,
All sorts of careers
The business owners,
The urban campers,
The highschool dropouts,
Grownups still in Pampers.
Theres even the alumni,
with their bumper sticker,
All taking a medicine,
that only makes them sicker.
All the while, the thoughts harbored within-
Makes me think, this wall we share, may as well be paper thin.
I smell the smell,
Made a call with a cell,
No help from the ones dressed in blue
Just me and myself, seeing it through.
The war is mine,
The battles they own,
Let it end, before this wall we share,
Becomes their gravestone
Oct 5, 2019
Oct 5, 2019 at 9:26 AM UTC
Sam Jennings:
“What’s coming must be new — must be strange and fitful, awkward and passionate. A lover rediscovering the world, confused by its tactless kisses, yet charmed, endlessly but
*its dents and imperfections, its sadness and its religion,
the dimples where its ancient smile*
~~~~~~~
Oh, how I unabashedly covet his words,
Oh, how I wish all lovers here,
the would be lovers,
the never~me-woulda~coulda~crying when & why,
dinged and damaged by
first or failed prior attempts,
the oft heard discouraging words,
or worse the chilled silence of ghosting
The new romanticism,
colored by technology, damaged by the quiet disappearance of
dropouts hiding behind untrue names,
hid behind blackened screens,
and loss of shame & embarrassment at and of
the sadness that pervades the religion of these days of
lesser actual romantic love
Embrace the dents and the imperfections,
avoid those who present measuring cups of their attractives listed in priority order qualifications,
indeed
realize that it is within the dimples and smiles,
most genuine.
lies the yellow brick road
to the red rubies,
adorning the crown we seek,
of good love, true love,
with all of its accompanying
imperfections
unhid inside the dings, dents,
even inside the dimples and smiles.
and your own starry scars,
for who among can free admit,
it's imperfections that are
the most inviting
to only love poets
Jul 15, 2025
Jul 15, 2025 at 2:33 PM UTC
There's a town somewhere up north off of route 54
It's cheap to live there, but I wouldn't recommend it
It's streets run with greed, ****** and sin
The people there are devoid any sense of ethics
It will leave you all shocked and breathless
Welcome to the neighborhood
Where you board up your windows and doors then double check if they're locked
Where you can always hear some one screaming
"Stop"
"Stop"
The mayor has been in office for six terms
And in his cabinet are members of the mob
Whose fronts are local mom and pops
Where junkies like to hang out
While a mugging of an eighty four year old widow takes place around the block
Welcome to the neighborhood
Where you board up your windows and doors then double check if they're locked
Where you can always hear some one screaming
"Stop"
"Stop"
-Tommy Johnson
The youth are all in gangs that **** each other
Delinquent dropouts doing drive by's
Defiling untouched regions between innocent women's thighs
Girls making appointments for back alley coat hanger abortions
As some hate group constructs homemade bombs
Welcome to the neighborhood
Where you board up your windows and doors then double check if they're locked
Where you can always hear some one screaming
"Stop"
"Stop"
Diseases and food shortages
Rotten government cheese and unpaid mortgages
Call the department of health and human services
Life here is unbearable mercilessness
Poverty and violence
Money and bullets keep those who might talk silent
Here it has come down to a simple science
The spineless **** the non-compliant for their defiance and they lay lifeless by the hands of those who commit viscous acts so mindless
Where you board up your windows and doors then double check if they're locked
Where you can always hear some one screaming
"Stop"
"Stop"
You may ask, "where is God or the police?"
They're doing their bi-weekly patrol
And they're both on big brother's private payroll
There is now law and order in this contaminated area
It's an unkempt, repugnant pustule in the middle of the caked-on face of America
Welcome to the neighborhood
Where you board up your windows and doors then double check if they're locked
Where you can always hear some one screaming
"Stop"
"Stop"
Jun 12, 2014
Jun 12, 2014 at 9:00 PM UTC
It seems as if the things you call us are who we truly are.
But that's not true.
We aren't just the failures.
Or the dropouts.
We aren't ruining society.
Society is ruining us.
It makes us believe that we're never good enough.
Or small enough.
Or pretty enough.
But the things they say don't define us.
May 24, 2013
May 24, 2013 at 1:01 PM UTC
Some moments you’ll find can never be recreated a second time.
Such as when we first met; a moment I assumed I’d easily forget.
But it still lingers in my mind yet, even though nine months have passed down the line,
I still remember that night.
When I entered the room to opened armed embraces.
Where the bottles of beer clanked together as we matched up our names with our faces.
Our conversations hatched open common interests as we spoke of the things we liked best.
Spilling the alcohol scented thoughts off our tongues that run as wild as our mind traces.
Our futures memories of the coming months would become locked behind the
handles of our rooms,
Held imprisoned inside the walls of what became our nighttime tombs.
The voices of my old friends echo when they rebound of the walls filling their own voids in the now deserted halls.
That lie barren as they wait to be filled by the next year’s crew so that the endless circle of old and new resumes.
We’ve watched as our friendships have transcended onto another plateau.
Through break ups, fallouts, spilled wine, growth sprouts, chinstraps and dropouts.
But the end is here and it’s time to go home;
Time to close the curtains on that perfect view,
And open them up again to something new.
May 17, 2013
May 17, 2013 at 4:26 PM UTC
Everyone tells you to never give up your dreams
But I am one of those dropouts
Of that philosophy it seems
I used to repeat that inspiration in my head as I drew
Pictures and pictures of things I decided were not good
At least not good enough to achieve my perfect future Where everyone is in awe of my work
And gushes about me over and over
I decided that my paintings would have to remain in the garbage
Where I believed they deserved to be
Because I had a shortage
Of belief in me
And what I thought I could be
I need money to survive
So I'll give up what I love
For a life of financial consistency
But whether or not my dreams ever come to fruition
I'm going to say what everyone else did
And tell my children and grandchildren
To never give up their dreams
While I throw away my last paintings and drawings in the trash
I pray that they will get what I never had
A dream that came true
And a job they love to do
Mar 27, 2017
Mar 27, 2017 at 2:21 PM UTC
A nearly-elderly couple
(I mean the awkward post-middle-age
stage where the physical energy can't
quite keep up with the emotional energy.)
pays me minimum wage
to burn myself in as many ways as possible.
And I'm pretty okay with that.
I heard a gunshot
from my bedroom window last night,
followed by the screeching departure
of four tires supporting
a metal case of high school dropouts.
And I'm pretty okay with that, too.
Jul 20, 2014
Jul 20, 2014 at 1:49 AM UTC
I.Q's are at a parallel with expectations.
Exceptionally high at a parallel with section 8 incarcarations.
Beware of the dropouts, for they seek what lies beyond reach.
Beware because they seek wisdom far beyond what a college could teach.
Beware of the most hateful heart, for one day it'll become the most powerful love.
Beware of the addict to kick the habit to find art, as the most powerful drug.
Born from the white picket fence cementry, becoming the change always seeked in his dreams.
A Fire in his chest.
A burning soul, a phoenix that rebirths from the ashes of his words.
The Genius Of The Suburbs.
Jan 11, 2016
Jan 11, 2016 at 10:24 PM UTC
Pencils that write me in words that delight me and play fights through long nights with verses so light as to almost float away.
Then there's the day,
Where reality bites me in scenes quite unsightly and 'words don't come easy' among the dropouts and ****** of society,where poetry is not spoken but ripped off your tongues by the hopeless and broken and pledged in the pawn shop,
all we become as we become tokens to buy are the mute and the word blind,the cruel and the unkind and there's nothing to find here in the hearts of the lined men,
whose faces belie the truth that rockets inside them.
And some speak at times in riddles and rhymes but the words come out wrong because the days are so long and the alcohol's strong and nobody hears them,more silence from lined men,
when will it end?
Oh Babylon gone,
done for and taken and left us forsaken in this land of the prophets and the profits we take from the fakers and spivs,give us some sense of living in the land where no giving is easy and it's easier to take than to ask.
All hope has left on the last boat to Zion and those that are left have no shoulders to cry on,
but the lined men are here to take your last words,to write them on moonstones,the groans of destruction,construct your own melodies
as the blood in you freezes and the heating goes off
as we all do
at some time.
Oct 27, 2013
Oct 27, 2013 at 2:12 AM UTC
We'd all like to be loved and cared for but in reality we're not. You can't ever be yourself without constantly having someone judge you anymore. Your so called "friends" find it entertaining to mess with you because it makes others laugh. We're judged by every little thing we do including our hobbies. I'm not an amazing poet I do this for fun but I'm still going to get judged by others including my so called friends. I hate it. I do. Growing up is scary, yet exciting all I want to do is be liked by my peers but societies changed to where not everyone can get along and be friends. Miss having decent conversations with people I use to be close with. Now coke addicts or highschool dropouts I try to become to the best of my ability to make a name for myself. You may not enjoy this poem and we're all entitled to our opinion but sometimes I wish I had someone who would never give up on me.
Jun 9, 2014
Jun 9, 2014 at 1:15 AM UTC
Writing a poem is hard. I’m telling you straight up, no lie.
There’s a lot to worry about, like words, length and rhyme.
I can tell you right now if this wasn’t an assignment there would be no chance
Of me doing this, just like you’d never catch me doing a dance
To any song ever. I’ve had to think a lot about what to write
Mostly ‘cause I’m not allowed to use any obscene language, right?
It was hard. Most of my other poems involved bashing the other kids in IB
And if you ask me they deserve it for being way too cocky.
Bragging about that perfect score on the ACT and the SAT
Acting as if you know the answer to every question you see.
I thought about writing a poem for a girl, the one with so much sass
That it’s almost intolerable except **** that ***
But I lied, there’s no girl, I just wanted to say ***
Oh please, grow up, you guys are practically high school dropouts: no class
In reality, I wasted an entire poem on not even having a specific topic
And I don’t see a problem with that, even if you might. You can just **** it.
Up. **** it up.
Apr 16, 2015
Apr 16, 2015 at 12:07 AM UTC
They want me quiet
Cuz I might start a riot
They want me quiet
Cuz I might provoke violence
But if you look at history
Its filled with adveraries
That you and me
Don't have apart of
Debt been filled since this
Country was bought
So how the hell is it our fault?
Taxes illegally paid for the rich to be richer
And poor to be poorer
Hate inpsires jealousy
And jealousy inspires vegenence
Now if we put our heads together
We could see who the real criminals are?
But look afar beyond the stars
You'll a glimpse of he'll
Staring down at thee
Above the stratosphere here me clear Don't be a slave to fear
Now most will glance at this poem
Not knowing
Truth will set you free .even
If it cost me my liberty
Id much rather die rich in wisdom
Than dumb soul dimmed and rich
Most people think materials matter
But when you die your body shatters
Only to be fed to
By worms and the rants and other
Carcass eating critters
Since society is bitter
It seems deaths is a friendly place .even though it gets the worse taste
Bunch of philosphers giving theories
On where we go in the afterlife
Is the biggest mystery?
For we have yet to see
Any body come back from the cemetery
Forget the movies and the media scaring freaks
Heart will tell you more truth
Than some asinine tube
Where some rambling yuppies
Telling you how to love your life
People slavin' themselves for better what?
Degrees mean nothing now
Never had never will
Its all a facade
Funny thing Is majority billionaires were dropouts
Kind of ironic don't you think?
We have a society that's scared to think
Think for themselves and free their minds
But too focus driven about the grind
Making more money equals more debt
They don't teach real economics
That's why were in a financial threat
Every year debts climbs higher and higher
And people think it's getting better and better
Wake up fools and smell the war
Smog is near pain is here
Everything you searching for
Is going to disappear
So mote it be
Jul 22, 2017
Jul 22, 2017 at 3:32 AM UTC
sinking us deeper is the day's oldest now
time does georaphy changes
very large dropouts are lives
you can't come into the same place again
Jul 29, 2017
Jul 29, 2017 at 11:28 AM UTC