"societally" poems
I am a white, Jewish girl from Florida.
Hit me.
Hit me with your white girl jokes,
Your Jewish American Princess stereotypes.
I will giggle and squeal right along with you.
Because yeah,
I do order white chocolate mocha frappuchinos from Starbucks,
I Instagram pictures of my nails,
I take selfies, whiten my teeth, straighten my hair,
Shop at Forever21 and drink Naked Juice like it is my job.
Yeah, my daddy buys me things,
I don’t pay for my data plan,
There’s no way in hell I would drive a sedan,
I wear Nike shorts and avoid any nearby cameraman,
And let me tell you, I love jamming out to old school Britney Spears.
Hit me one more time, because none of that means I am any less intelligent,
Any less diligent,
Any less likely to face judgment
Than any other slice of diversity around me –
I am a white, Jewish girl
My nose is not its own cartoon,
I eat bagels (but I absolutely hate lox),
I’m not tan or even the least bit tinted,
And god knows I don’t wear Uggs.
Tell me I need to get married young,
Major in business,
Wear clothes that leave me airless,
Get some of that European gracefulness,
But don’t tell me I’m dumb.
Don’t tell me I’m not thoughtful.
I’m a white girl.
Take a glance at my resourcefulness,
Understand my goals of being ambitious,
Get rid of your own stereotype-inducing cockiness,
And notice me in all of my flawlessness.
Because I am a white girl,
And I am unique, strong, inventive,
Empowered, passionate, adventurous,
Indomitable, unbeatable.
I am an individual –
Not part of some whole that you put me in to stabilize your mold,
Not the example of a societally scatterbrained ***** meant to be your centerfold,
Not a previously worn-out piece of clothing thrown to the gutter unsold,
Rather a human being of my own rules and my own morals
A human being with ideas and intelligence and power,
A white, Jewish girl,
A person.
Nov 21, 2013
Nov 21, 2013 at 5:31 PM UTC
I'm strapped for battle, and prepared for war, so societally sacrilegious make a rich man pray to god for no more, but I'm so subliminally catastrophe ridden that I'll take off like a ***** mcdonalds napkin blown from the hands of a man that was shown the true depth of his wager with sin, because I've been looking within and inside the size of my fevered lies that I tell myself at night so I can close my eyes, and stifle out the cries of the boy who staked his soul in the rise of his own demise
Aug 11, 2014
Aug 11, 2014 at 9:01 PM UTC
When times are hard- as freezer doors or splintered dinosaur bones-
When times are hard and cold and sort of painful by their very touch
A short-term solution may be found
Unglamorous, unremarkable, but sound:
Submit to moderation.
Harder than heroic, searing want or hope
Undaunted or tragedy-
Submit to not-knowing-ness,
To water-filled gardens
Where you float among ferns, and small lights are arranged in your hair.
Submit to plodding, to avoiding the dark-lit streets,
To shedding dread desire for sparse morality
Submit to the temporary reprieve of going the known ways,
Of doing what's societally right, of fleeing the fire and the glory of the fight
Submit
To your better sense, hand your heart to your mind and
revel in the knowing that
You'll manage. It. Whatever it is that plagues you.
Submit to sensibility.
And you'll know in a while,
After the thorns and dust and glass is all gone that-
You can
Raise your head,
Straighten slumped shoulders,
Remove the knots from your ankles
And find
Gladness
The grass, the water, the sunlight.
Feb 19, 2013
Feb 19, 2013 at 2:02 PM UTC
Aye, so I feel down
so like any societally inept man throughout history
I resign to write self-assuring philosophy
Whole books of advice, not taken
to scorn those who make my mistakes
I even quote my dead depressed brothers
to bestow a false valid weight
But more than anything at all,
I think Nietzsche was most right;
all us philosophers
who shrugged off all heaven or hope
retreat to our own arrogant plan
that we figured it all out
Jan 4, 2015
Jan 4, 2015 at 12:17 PM UTC
1
with each passing day you only grow yet more sickened by your every birth rite; keep your loathing for your *** and your name in a glass full of soil on your bedroom windowsill where the light will bring life before your societally imposed sense of shame can strike it down. you belong in a textbook of the future, a born-astronaut’s biology class.
2
here is somebody else’s name; here is your voice, with the texture of a nimbus cloud; here are your eyes coloured all blue, but a sickly sort, blue like a vein, blue like the wrong side of the sky, and the wrong shape of skull.
3
by the time you wake up, the world has already determined who you are going to be today. randomised generation: you are, you are a girl, you are doe-eyed, you are bitter, you are sweet, you are a puzzle to be solved, a shell to be broken, a wrong to be put right, you are pity’s cygnet under the wing of the mother bird, you are beautiful. you are beautiful. but you want to be ugly.
4
you want to be a blank slate.
Jan 31, 2013
Jan 31, 2013 at 3:15 PM UTC
Polly Urethane
Girl with a peculiar name
Born into the oddest of times
She walks through the fields
Picking flowers at will
Tying them in bundles of rhyme
She then takes to the street
Corner of Humble and Meek
And gives flowers to the societally blind
Polly Urethane
The girl with a peculiar name
Looks at life and just has to laugh
Polly she knows
The silly world never slows
Here and gone in a flash
Polly she tries
To take it in stride
Though at times she doesn't understand
She's here to save all that's right
To the tune of delight
Played by a number nine piece magical band
Marching Main Street
Near the corner of Humble and Meek
Where Polly stands, flowers in hand
Polly Urethane
Girl with a peculiar name
Born into the oddest of times
Jul 11, 2013
Jul 11, 2013 at 6:39 AM UTC
But why can't your poems be happy they said
Well they can be
But why should they be?
My fathomage of contemplation dives deeper than societally accepted
but I don't want to be societally accepted
That's why I came here.
Go to your party and sing happy songs
And make happy conversation
And dream happy thoughts
And cry not so happy tears, when the happiness that was packed so tightly into the palms of your fists dissipates and leaves you shattered.
For my fists are open
And my words are spoken
And my poetry may not be happy or grace
But it sure leaves a smile on my face
Feb 21, 2016
Feb 21, 2016 at 11:37 AM UTC
I’ve never been the right kind of girl,
Too mean because I don’t smile often,
Too fake when I laugh,
Too skinny because I don’t have *****
Too fat when I can no longer squeeze into my old jeans,
Too quiet because I don’t voice my opinions,
Too loud when I speak my mind,
Too obliging because I follow orders,
Too stubborn when I make a stand.
You see,
We will never be the right kind of girls,
Nor do we have to be.
We are too much of everything,
That we can’t be labeled,
Put into societally standardized boxes.
Like the sun,
We can’t be contained.
Like a flower,
We can bend with the wind and still not snap.
Like a blade of grass,
We can be trampled on,
And still survive.
Nov 8, 2018
Nov 8, 2018 at 12:03 PM UTC
I don't believe in gender roles
Because how are we supposed to societally grow
If we set restrictions on
What can be done and by whom
Simply because of their anatomy?
I don't believe in quitting
Because how is anyone supposed to learn
If we just allow
Giving up on hopes, dreams, goals
Simply because, "it's too hard"?
And yet we make life a cage
Too small even for a canary
Choking ourselves with regulations
And stereotypes
Striking fear into our own hearts
We live in the land of ********
Where we claim
We can be whatever we want to be
And do anything we set our minds to
Yet here we are
Not much further along in our
Backwards thoughts
That originated pre oppression
Amd long before we boarded the Mayflower
Sep 4, 2016
Sep 4, 2016 at 1:03 AM UTC
She wanted to leave but she loved him
He just wanted their life as it was now, to continue
She wanted to experience the world and had never expected
Anyone to tunnel into her heart
She didn’t like it
A feminist would say choose career over men
Choose life over servitude
Love is a prison
And she knew they were right.
Because if she stayed she would resent him
And eventually then leave without him
Unless the unthinkable happened
And he got her pregnant
That would be worse than anything
She would be societally bound to be “happy” then
Its illegal to not want a child once it graduates to a fetus
She had seen it happen before
The late night confessionary posts on social media
“I want everyone to know that being a mother
And a working mother
Is STRESSFUL. My hair is falling out.
But its uh… worth it?”
That was how those posts went.
So she left. And she was too afraid to look back
But hoped that he was following.
Feb 11, 2019
Feb 11, 2019 at 4:19 PM UTC
paint your face
not too much but just enough to look like it's not
dress up in your costume
smile
laugh
say the "right" words
and move your body in the "right" way
you say you are an open book
that you trust too easily
but baby
that is so far from the truth
your distrust has armor that holds up expectations of perfection
you protect yourself from others seeing you
the real one
not the fabricated
societally conditioned Barbie
at the dispense of others' real-life fantasy
*** perfection
authenticity is being starved
and you are the one that is refusing to open your mouth
speak up
and live life boldly
Feb 3, 2022
Feb 3, 2022 at 1:53 AM UTC