"outdrink" poems - Hello Poetry

Sometimes I would walk through the halls, feeling nothing but anxiety. My mind would become flooded: What should I be doing… what should I be saying... what is everyone thinking? See- I used to float to the back of the room to the back of my mind where I escaped the world by reading. Nerdy. A loser. A freak. I was too intelligent for my age. It wasn’t COOL to get straight A’s. Then I advanced to the seventh grade, with no idea my life was about to change. I made a friend. Then Two. Then Three. A former unknown concept: “popularity”. Skater shoes, with laces you didn’t tie, pink backpacks, hair straight as a pin- Abercrombie- led me to a moment I still hate today: “Try some of this”. It wasn’t COOL if you said no. It was my first taste of intoxication, my first taste of escape- escape of my mind, the thoughts, The anxiety. The more I sipped, the more I let go. The drinks would become stronger, we raged every other night. Tolerances were creeping up high, control started waving goodbye to my mind. It wasn’t COOL to be sober. We laughed, we kid- called ourselves “alcoholics”. If only then I knew more, and the future I would soon endure because of the potion we poured and poured. It wasn’t COOL to be a lightweight. Some years later I bragged and I boasted, over the amount of liquor I could intake. “The only girl who could outdrink the boys”- the girl, I’d someday unrelated. She’d fallen for everything society had wanted to create. “Popularity”. Then came the day I knew would eventually arrive- the day of realization and what it meant to be alive. I no longer wanted to be COOL. Because with each drink, the value of life was swallowed- I never have felt quite that hollow. As if all the knowledge that once filled my mind vanished. I yearned for nothing but to go back to the days, when I was uncool and got straight A’s.

0

Mar 4, 2015

Mar 4, 2015 at 3:52 PM UTC

sammy-brock

Straight A's

Sometimes I would walk through the halls, feeling nothing but anxiety. My mind would become flooded: What should I be doing… what should I be saying... what is everyone thinking? See- I used to float to the back of the room to the back of my mind where I escaped the world by reading. Nerdy. A loser. A freak. I was too intelligent for my age. It wasn’t COOL to get straight A’s. Then I advanced to the seventh grade, with no idea my life was about to change. I made a friend. Then Two. Then Three. A former unknown concept: “popularity”. Skater shoes, with laces you didn’t tie, pink backpacks, hair straight as a pin- Abercrombie- led me to a moment I still hate today: “Try some of this”. It wasn’t COOL if you said no. It was my first taste of intoxication, my first taste of escape- escape of my mind, the thoughts, The anxiety. The more I sipped, the more I let go. The drinks would become stronger, we raged every other night. Tolerances were creeping up high, control started waving goodbye to my mind. It wasn’t COOL to be sober. We laughed, we kid- called ourselves “alcoholics”. If only then I knew more, and the future I would soon endure because of the potion we poured and poured. It wasn’t COOL to be a lightweight. Some years later I bragged and I boasted, over the amount of liquor I could intake. “The only girl who could outdrink the boys”- the girl, I’d someday unrelated. She’d fallen for everything society had wanted to create. “Popularity”. Then came the day I knew would eventually arrive- the day of realization and what it meant to be alive. I no longer wanted to be COOL. Because with each drink, the value of life was swallowed- I never have felt quite that hollow. As if all the knowledge that once filled my mind vanished. I yearned for nothing but to go back to the days, when I was uncool and got straight A’s.

58

we were inside a gazebo alone together with salt caramel beer on our hands and sticks of nicotine to syncopate our life spans to fill the dead air, you thought it was a great idea to talk about our vices you asked me why i drink and smoke i told you that ***** is like my own personal body of water my ocean, my river, my stream, my sea, my dead sea where i could either sink or swim, even float effortlessly and i only smoke when heaving a sigh is not enough i threw the same question right back at you and you said you have always been a sucker for winning so you drink to outdrink and smoke to outsmoke your buddies but most of the time, yourself we may have different reasons but we both agreed that we are at our sanest when we are at our drunkest you gave me another bottle and asked me if i was up for a challenge i nodded at you and that's the last thing I could remember

0

Aug 25, 2014

Aug 25, 2014 at 7:40 AM UTC

stutteringintestines

IX. Vices

we were inside a gazebo alone together with salt caramel beer on our hands and sticks of nicotine to syncopate our life spans to fill the dead air, you thought it was a great idea to talk about our vices you asked me why i drink and smoke i told you that ***** is like my own personal body of water my ocean, my river, my stream, my sea, my dead sea where i could either sink or swim, even float effortlessly and i only smoke when heaving a sigh is not enough i threw the same question right back at you and you said you have always been a sucker for winning so you drink to outdrink and smoke to outsmoke your buddies but most of the time, yourself we may have different reasons but we both agreed that we are at our sanest when we are at our drunkest you gave me another bottle and asked me if i was up for a challenge i nodded at you and that's the last thing I could remember

36

Strange trip through time as the music I hear comes from when I was in highschool. Currently I am 31, Korn are now an old band, smoking has been replaced by the juul and I find myself thinking when did I no longer have my finger on the pulse of society? Do teenagers know that their culture is created by 30 and 40 year olds who know them so well that they can target their individuality and make a profit out of them? Did I? I was rocking out to The Cure and The *** Pistols in highschool while everyone around me was listening to the black eyed peas and slipknot and somehow I still see the irony of it all. How detached am I? Is youth the key to being in touch with whats happening unless you find yourself as an influencer? Another social term that only existed in fashion magazines when I was in highschool now we focus on Instagrams and snapchats to tell us what's what and what fashion to follow. I'm trending on my younger self and what we call **** riding or *** kissing is now called stanning... Am I losing touch? is this what age does or does society simply become more marketable and I fall for less the older I get? At what point do I walk away and become old and just simply don't get it? Age sneaks up on us and soon we forget and lose track of what's happening and soon we have a group of highschool wannabe punk *** kids laughing at us as we stand in line at the mall, wired, tired and exhausted from work but we've only got a few hours to get this last minute gift for our friend or for a babyshower and we make under what we deserve because we bust our *** and yet the house payment racks up and our manager who is younger than us by a year somehow thinks they're better than us, so we have to see these hoodie wearing smirking *** teenage brats mock us, meanwhile we can outdrink, outparty, outfuck and out run them because no matter how hard they think they are, we've got the experience to support us. Age sneaks up and soon those punk *** whiny instastars become 30 year olds who say the same **** we do because when we're young everyone lives forever and hindsight is 3030 or 4040 but this is part bitter, part better, its part knowledge and part wisdom, it's part jaded and part self aware. At the end of the day it's all just signs of age.

0

Jan 23, 2019

Jan 23, 2019 at 3:26 AM UTC

TheJester

The Signs of Age

Strange trip through time as the music I hear comes from when I was in highschool. Currently I am 31, Korn are now an old band, smoking has been replaced by the juul and I find myself thinking when did I no longer have my finger on the pulse of society? Do teenagers know that their culture is created by 30 and 40 year olds who know them so well that they can target their individuality and make a profit out of them? Did I? I was rocking out to The Cure and The *** Pistols in highschool while everyone around me was listening to the black eyed peas and slipknot and somehow I still see the irony of it all. How detached am I? Is youth the key to being in touch with whats happening unless you find yourself as an influencer? Another social term that only existed in fashion magazines when I was in highschool now we focus on Instagrams and snapchats to tell us what's what and what fashion to follow. I'm trending on my younger self and what we call **** riding or *** kissing is now called stanning... Am I losing touch? is this what age does or does society simply become more marketable and I fall for less the older I get? At what point do I walk away and become old and just simply don't get it? Age sneaks up on us and soon we forget and lose track of what's happening and soon we have a group of highschool wannabe punk *** kids laughing at us as we stand in line at the mall, wired, tired and exhausted from work but we've only got a few hours to get this last minute gift for our friend or for a babyshower and we make under what we deserve because we bust our *** and yet the house payment racks up and our manager who is younger than us by a year somehow thinks they're better than us, so we have to see these hoodie wearing smirking *** teenage brats mock us, meanwhile we can outdrink, outparty, outfuck and out run them because no matter how hard they think they are, we've got the experience to support us. Age sneaks up and soon those punk *** whiny instastars become 30 year olds who say the same **** we do because when we're young everyone lives forever and hindsight is 3030 or 4040 but this is part bitter, part better, its part knowledge and part wisdom, it's part jaded and part self aware. At the end of the day it's all just signs of age.

14