Ode To Literacy

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It's alarming

The statistics we find about:

test scores,

teen pregnancy,

underage alcohol consumption.

Because ladies and gentlemen,

two of these are shooting up

more regularly than

the homely waitress at Village Inn.

And it's not

our academics.

It's sad, really,

that more teens are

getting shit faced every weekend

and popping out offspring

than can comprehend a passage of Shakespeare

or even spell Shakespeare.

S-H-A-K-E-S-P-E-A-R-E

And I'm sorry

if I sound like a pretentious broken record

Reiterating the reasons

I'm diappointed in my own generation

Because half of my class doesn't know what

Reiterate

R-E-I-T-E-R-A-T-E

means.

So this is for the young men and women

living in the year 2013

who say

Carpe Diem

that's

C-A-R-P-E SPACE D-I-E-M

Instead of YOLO.

Who take AP classes

not only for the college credit,

but also because

if they hear

"Wait, aren't the Gangnam Style guy

and that one North Korean guy,

the one that's gonna nuke us,

aren't they the same person?"

One more time,

they will find a way to

electrocute

E-L-E-C-T-R-O-C-U-T-E

themselves with a TI-84

This is for the young men and women

Who know that

a static character

is not

a guy with a dryer sheet

stuck to his pants.

Who believe

in the power of the spoken word

like She is a God

That's right, She.

and the word God

is escaping the lips

of a Conservative

C-O-N-S-E-R-V-A-T-I-V-E

school's resident

Atheist

so you know

it's a powerful thing.

Because this

is for the young men and women

who are today silenced

s-i-l-e-n-c-e-d

by their peers

but one day

will take the world back

and place pens in fists

and demand a new

E-N-D-I-N-G

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