Between a Rock and a Hard Place
Location
Asian-American immigrant
Born in the East, thrown to the West
My best was all I could give
For the past five years I've accumulated fears
Fistfuls of tears that fill the tank in which I'm drowning
Secretly frowning behind the bars of my own forced smile
All the while knowing that my issues are going to last
A long
Long while
The racial slurs and stereotypes are the heated topics of debate
People hesitate to speak to be politically correct
As to not affect the sensitive foreigner
While I accept the validity of the issue of the fluidity between
A joke and an offensive slur
I think that sometimes these foreground issues blur
The window through which we have to see
Inside the walls of the likes of me
There is a struggle with incompatibility
For we are the children brought to the land of the free
Yet we arrived in chains
Chained to the traditions of our past
At last we are here yet we are downcasted
Expected to fulfill our duties and honor our mom or dad
Who had worked so hard so we can succeed
And we'd work so hard only to find
That life is cruel for our kind
We must obey, we must portray,
We don't want to disappoint you
But while our peers set out to spend their youths
We'll simply be too old to
My eyes have always been shrouded with green
I've seen them going out, going just to "live a little"
And little did I know, I can't live like that until I'm older
But then I'll grow old, or be too tired to enjoy it
Having spent my youth fitting a mold, or fulfilling my parents' portrait
Ignore it, they tell me, but it's easier said than done
For one, they do not see the lives my parents have led
To have fed the mouth through which I'm speaking
But leaking through my eyes are secrets
That I'm afraid at which they might be peeking
Because I was brought to a land where I must be one way
And say and play and do as I am told
But lo and behold, I am no longer of one culture but of two
And I want to be a little American, too