Unlike on the streets, we shoot up caffeine,
some Ritalin and Adderall if we're feeling too low.
Some Saturdays we cram
all the f***ing textbooks into a corner
and we sit on a throne of graphite and scrawled notes
that will never see the light,
and because we sit there stoically,
we get paper cuts on our a****.
Damn, it hurts to walk
in this sleep-deprived, jittery state,
where each day falls into another
with the speed of drying paint.
And that teacher, with her mustache,
and wrinkled white blouse,
she wiggles her gnarly fingers at us
and demands more of the excellence
we've already shoved at her.
So we bleed out some more, just a bit,
and promise ourselves that the pain will end
and the voices will stop.
That our iPod will not remain on shuffle forever
to drown out the sounds of the French Revolution
and parabolic functions.
That he will not be drunk at Homecoming this year;
that she will drop birth control and her sucky a** boyfriend.
That we will all get into a good school
and become the f****** perfect carbon copies of our parents.
We can't remember how many times we've made these promises,
how many times we've fallen asleep to them,
and woken up to them,
in this endless cycle where nothing changes,
but we keep trying to change it
anyway.