Wake Up America

Wake up America
The kids are not alright.

We hide behind broken smiles and snappy urls
Numb to the fear that the next school day may be our last

Our world is crumbling
Our forests and oceans, dying

But you say the SATs are more important than our sanity
Girls are taught to cover up
For boys will be boys
But boys aren't taught to respect

And the boys that were once girls are thrown aside
And the girls that were once boys are ridiculed
And all they are all policed

When the football player rapes the cheerleader
The judge doesn't want to ruin his career
So he gets off
But you make her carry the child for it's childhood is important
Yet he just stole hers

The theatre kids hid behind forced laughter
Inside they're crying
Their art isn't respected anymore
They won't make the Olympics or cure cancer so what are they worth
The dreamers and poets are told to conform or be forced to
The class clown covers their crippling depression by poking fun of the society that is breaking him
And covers his scars with an oversized hoodie and the "I get cold easily" excuse
no one will notice
Because they say teenagers will just be moody, teenagers are too sensitive
But when they jump off the ledge it's seen as a tragedy
They didn't see it coming
He was so happy
He was only happy because you gave him no other options to be

And the athletes are told to treat their bodies like the beloved temples they are
But our dancers starve themselves so that they can have the "perfect body" you always talk about
But you never tell them the truth
That all bodies are perfect the way they are
And our quarterbacks take steroids because a scholarship might be the key to getting out of the neighborhood where gunshots are as common as birds tweets

When we stand up for our lives
The ones taken everyday
The deaths you ignore and send out a recycled 140 characters of mourning
When we stand up we our told we don't know what we are doing
That we are uneducated
How can we be educated if bullets rip through our flesh in our cafeterias and classrooms
You teach us violence isn't the answer then send us off to fight for a country that won't fight for us when we return

You see dedication which to you looks like distraction
You see stubborness
and anger

We have all of this because you refuse to see what we see

We see the people on the streets
We see the violence of the police
We see the hunger in our peers eyes
We see the deaths of our friends
We see our parents generation not fighting for us
We see our politicians turning a blind eye
We see a broken world left to us because the older generation can't agree that it needs to be fixed

Wake up America
The parents aren't alright

 

This poem is about: 
Me
My community
My country
Our world

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