America

Location

America you are pushing me in all of the wrong directions.

You have pulled saltwater rivers down my soft, child cheeks.

No amount of pomegranate face soap can wash away the valleys they’ve pulled across my face.

I grow my hair long and then cut it short for the shock value.

I am trying to hard to feel things because I hate you for only teaching me how to think.

Thinking comes easy and natural, but feeling

Feeling is required and expected but must be done correctly and only to a certain degree.

Our generation, you tell us, our generation

Oh how nice to live in any other time, because here and now is when it all falls apart

But we are not the problem, and we sure as hell aren’t the solution.

We are not slackers or soldiers, we are not dreamers or fighters.

We are downloading music illegally and watching our tv shows on hulu and carrying our ipods in our back pockets as if they might protect us.

We are keeping up with the Kardashians and the real housewives of Miami and the girls on mtv who turn 16 inside sparkling dresses and BMWs. 

We are the last Dandelion seed that holds tight to its roots, afraid to be blown into the wind.

Afraid of being set free.

I am attempting the impossible.

I’ve become determined to be something, because being someone is not enough.

You’ve made that quite clear. 

I chase ideas so hard that my feet lose purchase on the cracked, dry ground.

I take 20 minute showers because I have no sympathy for Los Angeles and its drought. 

I read Gatsby like the bible and stared into those yellow and blue eyes just a second too long. 

I happened to catch my own reflection in them, and I am afraid. 

I want you to know that I am not a child anymore.

America you are feeding me dreams and ideas like they are calories.

As if I need thousands a day to survive and try as I might I can’t reject them.

I absorb the media and imbibe technology because you haven’t given me a choice.

You tell me it is better to be an individual.

Better than what?

America you are pushing, pushing

Pushing me to achieve and to do and to make

Pushing us all to change the world, to fix it.

As if we were Gods, as if we had any right to change things, as if we knew how to make things good.

We don’t know shit and if you haven’t figured that out by now

America go fuck yourself. 

You have built me up with your high ideals underfoot, but ideals are insubstantial

And now they are breaking us down. 

Censorship has been my dream catcher, a soft mesh web that only let in what was pleasant.

But who are we really, if not the demonic images of our half conscious?

Out of thick plastic windows America is a patchwork quilt, protecting something beautiful that yet remains asleep.

We wait for her still, after all this time.

The curves of her unconscious body roll and fold over the farms and fields of the dying.

I am not a child but I am too young to understand. 

I decided to be a writer, and went about searching for my share of suffering.

I gathered experience and sorrow with reverence.

I stole more than my fare share, because I was not content with being fine.

I cherished my small sadnesses because I want to create art with my words.

I want to have a beautiful mind.

But you’ve forced the photographs at me so hard that I’ve come to accept a world in two dimensions.

America will you stop fucking lying to me?

I hate you, you know that?

Perfect is a lie and I am fading away in my attempt to hold on to ideas.

I am clattering across rooftops and climbing in trees because I have grown too large for the ground.

America you have inflated me full of thoughts and ideas

You have ballooned me up and I am too large for my body

You filled me so big, and you aren’t even strong enough to take my weight

You selfish bitch.

Did you think to consult the earth or the sky before you chopped down the trees, built up the cities, turned on the lights when it was supposed to be dark?

And then you ask us why we’re so fucked up.

Don’t you think you’d be just a little bit weird if you were made for trees and dirt but lived in a world of buildings and concrete?

Mightn’t you go slightly insane, if people were always flipping switches and creating day when it was meant to be night?

We put trees in pots. Fucking pots.

Do you care?

America you have lost battle after battle but you keep on fighting this war, 

Bolstered up by all that righteousness and zeal.

Don’t you know that it’s a lost cause?

Maybe you do, in which case I could probably find it in me to admire your determination to die fighting. 

America, you are broken.

You are darling, and I hate to be the one to break it to you.

It was destined to come to this, really.

You were founded on righteousness and unfulfilled ideals,

Founded by straight white men and dying even then.

You were founded so that people who weren’t born elite could get elite and once that was done you had served your purpose and were left to shiver in the cold.

And there are politicians who are still determined to personally live out that shattered American dream.

And there are the ones who are determined to put you back together, because they have managed to find a beauty that I can’t see in your foundation.

And the ones who want to start all again.

I hate them all.

I don’t want to change things, I don’t want to be complacent, I don’t want to break things or fix things or remain impassive to the things washing over me. 

Please America, don’t take this out on me.

It’s time to stop pushing, I don’t want to do anymore.

Please, let me be.

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