College Ruled Paper (But NEVER Wide Ruled.)

 

There's a call for change, for warmth, for compassion

But you can only find these through blood colored ink on paper

As kindness and caring are doled out in ration

Cries are being heard asking for a savior.

 

There can never be full light because

We cannot appreciate without dark

But when words flow from your mind and from behind a city light, pause

For we begin to begin to make a mark.

 

But that's just it, isn't it? A broken world

 

Left by a careless generation   o v e rflows with

 

chaos       destruction       plumes of disaster       unfurl

 

And we are expected to rectify this monolith?

 

How can you make your mark on those too indignant to listen?

 

Offended by the perception and the impression that the oppression

 

Which remains on our fair world sending frissons

 

Of fear to the people fails to be an adequate lesson.

 

They scoff, sneer and add, “Do you really think your opinion matters?

Who told you that you might have a say in what happens to your future?

You don't get to choose if you escape from being battered

By corruption, pollution, interruptions and functions of salt in our sutures.”

 

They tell us, “You can be anything.”

“As long as it's a doctor or a lawyer, or a liar or a conspirator, or an enabler

As long as you keep the wool over your eyes and dare not to peek out and bring

what you think might change our plans of greed, which whirl in a gray blur.

 

The irresistible and eternal exchange of 26 characters fuels our hope.

Chains, gas, bullets, and malice will not define us.

They say “You're ungrateful.” So we lean into the noose provided by guilt's rope.-

We are an indigent generation, held back by those who we are supposed to trust.

 

If there's any dignity left, it remains in the children

I who wield a pen and college ruled paper (but never wide ruled)

Because thinking outside of lines is discouraged by our kindred

Who refuse to see change, for fear of being ridiculed.

 

We cannot blame the populace who blames the ones before

We can only submit poetry and words crafted wisely

And crush the notion that teenagers cannot care for

A damaged creation, and spearhead a renaissance slowly and concisely.