"If I could have projected my thoughts into other people, you would have never doubted even for an instant you were loved." ... This and another line of the unedited version of this poem have always been most devastating for me and the most personal.

this is the best spoken word ive ever heard


I'm sick and tired of hearing grown-ups speak for teenagers,
Singing the `Anthem of the Teens` we never wrote,
Bottled up voices, we have been silenced
I'm sick of hearing slander of an age group lead astray,
People wonder why our generation is so dysfunctional,
You forget that we were raised being told there was no such thing as perfection or 10/10,
That beauty was found on TV screens, in flawless skin and six-packs,
That love never lasts and people will only want us if we can fit ourselves into beauty like shoes that are too small.
Try going outside when the world is full of cat calls, wolf whistles from people twice our age,
When we are told to fit ourselves into categories long outdated:
`Male` or `Female`
`Straight` or `Gay`
Transgender, Asexual, these were words we were never taught,
And if you never get the all-clear you cannot know what is right,
or accepted,
It is sad that I know more people who self harm, than people who know what they want to be when they are older,
Reality has sucked the ambition out of us, we are confined to dead end jobs,
These days, we have `realistic dreams` and `unrealistic dreams`
Because dreams are so well known for being realistic!
We have kept our dreams held close and filed away because we know they are so easy to break,
And everyone we have ever shown has always said `Impossible` and tried to give us a replacement,
It is sad If you ask me to name you a drug addict,
I can point at a random student in my school corridor and have a 1 in 10 chance of getting it right,
We are all afraid of different things,
but reality is the one thing that scares all of us,
And when you are so high you're seeing purple dragons,
part of you wants to hit the ground hard so that they are the last thing you see,
We look for love in one another,
Search for moments of perfection in a catastrophe,
Love in a wasteland of nuclear fallout,
Bearing our skin and innocence in the hopes someone out there finds us beautiful
Our parents lied about Santa and the tooth fairy, so they cannot be the judge if we are attractive,
right?
My science teacher taught me,
That as we get older, the lies start of peel away like the skins of an onion,
And I wish she was still talking about the curriculum,
When you get older you start to see the cracks in your own skin,
As the system starts to pump conformity into your blood,
You wonder how our age group came to this!
The alcohol, crack cocaine, the under-age sex,
We are all just trying to kill ourselves before this gets worse,
We could not tell you how long ago we stopped believing in `it gets better`,
And If you don't believe me,
The next time you see a teenager on the way too, from or in school,
Look at their eyes,
Look at the moment they see right through your shallow lies,
Look at how they understand the broken, the hollow, the tired beggars of people once whole,
I remember scanning my maths class the day we got told we were getting put into another exam we didn't need,
Our futures were in the hands of men too used to working with machines than with children,
Unlike the last time, we didn't protest,
We sat back in our chairs, ran hands through our hair, some picked the scabs on their wrists,
Our eyes were dry and tired,
My teacher looked at us, I can see her tears even now, and all she could say was “I'm sorry”
Later I heard her yelling at senior management,
There is nothing worse than watching someone die,
I know that,
We were all happy kids once,
With bright eyes and a great sense of humour,
That's who she knew before this madness,
Now look at us,
Looking for hope in the smallest places,
Diving into danger, hoping it will keep our souls alive just a little longer,
Don't you dare ever tell me the system is not broken.
I have seen too many dead souls in the school corridors to ever believe that ever again.
We are not singing no anthem of yours
There is no patriotism in broken hearts,
Or suicide notes,
Or long sleeves covering scars from the nights that never seemed to end,
Now we are all grown up, our demons are no longer confined to nightmares,
They perch on our shoulders like mockingbirds,
And sing our flaws outwards,
A broken system creates broken people,
And I fear the day,
You see what you have created.  
- Curls 101

(I was so nervous when recording this! Please let me know if you could relate to this- that is what I was aiming for)

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