What is there really left to say?
Tell me, please, really, tell me.
Feed me the language I should use,
that I can tell to others,
because I'm gradually,
so g r a d u a l l y
starving.
(But somehow never dying.
I'm made of paper skin and dusty bones,
but I'm still here.)
I'm tired, I'm tired, I'm tired.
Oh-so tragically tired.
"You're too young, for depression,"
they say.
Too young to be tired,
too young for depression.
Like it's a cigarette,
and you need to be
over eighteen
to buy a carton of them,
the cancer sticks.
Like it's alcohol,
and you need to wait
until you've been here for
twenty-one years
to overdose on it;
twenty-one years
to kill yourself with it.
It's a tragedy. It really is.
(Tell me a story, my dear.
Tell me it honest, tell me it here.
Give me the colors of the sky.
Give me all the lions, tigers, and bears,
oh my.)
The decayed youth --
that really is a tragedy.
Football, lackluster garage bands, art clubs, honor societies, sleeping on friends' carpets, midnight premieres, dancing and singing and acting and hugging in theater groups, broken hearts mended by desserts, glowing hearts stitched with red threads and quirky patterns, open fields of tall grass and dirt, awkward high school dances, graduation speeches that either last too long or not long enough, and aging into a number beginning with a one or a two.
What a tragedy it is --
that youth can be
so easily intoxicated with alcohol,
and so carelessly blackened with cigarettes.
"You're too young, for depression."
Like it's some kind of
exclusive club,
only for veterans of war --
no rookies allowed.
YOU ARE READING
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PoetryA collection of tragedies of sorts, of demons or angels (whatever you'd fancy to call them) that lurk and/or gleam in my mind. Written when the moon's dreary and the sun's near awakening. Obnoxiously metaphoric, subtly inspirational. © Jake Sullivan...
