not everyone passes the test.
not all of us come out of here
with dreams, success.  
when you’re stuck inside the box, it’s 
hard to know more than
the stale smell of
cardboard.

this is our youth.  
we are living inside of
caskets, stuck in a microcosm
of wrongness and everything corrupt.
we are fatigued, fragmented,
the victims of a system that isn’t 
working anymore.

we try and end up with purple
under our eyes.  pick one,
you can’t have the other.
tread that tightrope carefully,
it’s the rest of your life.
follow tradition, cut along the dotted lines.
don’t close your eyes.

too many fall through the cracks.  
one size doesn’t fit all,
standardized isn’t always right.
this is a genocide of youthful dreams.
pick a job that will pay,
don’t waste any time. the rule makers
are always, always right.

and one day we will be sixteen hundred
corpses, joining those
who were weaker than the monster,
its prey.  manufactured futures,
meaningless.  we will be standardized
by dirt, made equal by stopped hearts
and dates etched in stone.

we must break out while it’s still daylight.