Thank you teacher

For not seeing in the bleachers

A child sits there through the violence

In silence.

He is tormented and attacked

With the words which he speaks not back

To the ones who

He pretends

Are his friends.

He gets up and you see

A rowdy kid not full of glee,

But you just sit and stare

As if he is not over there.

He is almost full of weeping

And you just sit there wishing to be sleeping.

You favoring little tyrant.

This is not fair.

He comes to you, you know,

To escape his peer-like foe,

And all you have to say

Is that they're only words, just play.

What an excuse for a teacher,

You are.

But these words are more than that

To say he's ugly, gay, and fat

Is to say that he is far below

The average scum on death row.

He might as well be there

On that execution chair

Just to escape his torture

That is his life.

One word sticks clearly to him

Far more than the rest.

What is it about the word "gay"

That we most detest?

Why is this considered feminine

And why not the best?

If this is truly natural

This lifestyle,

They say,

Then why do we hate it so?

Why this way?

He looks within himself

And soon realizes

That he is that being

That everyone despises.

The worst is to see

That he hates who he be,

And everyone around him

Like himself.

He kills himself in his head

For that is to be truly dead.

To walk amongst the living

Without self-care to be giving.

To like other guys

Means for him to be despised,

And yet he tries

To change

To be normal.

He goes out on a date

And makes it very formal

With a girl that is his friend,

But yet he likes her not in the end

For she is as appealing

As rotten eggs on the ceiling

Dripping down on your face

Which would make you leave in haste

Were it you

In that situation too.

In the school, every day,

He hears the negative connotation of "gay"

Placed on himself and the other people.

Good thing he goes not to a steeple

Where people say he is no kin

And will burn in the fires of sin.

All faggots go to Hell,

In that dark heated well

With the murderers and rapists

Of latest.

It matters not if they be chaste

And the kindest in the human race,

For they shall burn in the fire

Filled with people with mad desires.

Why does the mad world

Put bad weight on a word?

He ponders in deep thought

This question a lot

Because of this word

That he heard.

He wishes he could die,

Evaporate into the sky

All because a teacher

In the bleachers

Had done nothing of his weary facial features.

But it will be better one day

For that boy is I, I say.

And yet I still feel the pain

Of lightning in the rain

When someone says "gay" as if it's bad,

And saying it when really mad.

So, if it is only words, you say,

Why does it hurt this way?