An Apology - A Spoken Word Poem


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When we are told to fit ourselves into categories long outdated: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)

Spoken Word Poetry: Teenagers

I sit down and open my palms to the universe.
Connect my index fingers- It completes the circuit. 
I don’t want to be real. 
I breath in.
My fingers feel the dips and rises of a wicker fence.
I walk past a magic stone building and the air feels like the split second before getting struck by lightning.
A woman in a black lab coat walks past me,
I can feel the fabric scrape past my hand. 
There is a disease, it eats their faces like lambswool.
A boy with one purple eye twists the mass of his top lip into a smile. 
Or is it a sneer.
I breath out.
The headphones pulse cool acoustic into my ears.
My sisters perfume has Jasmine in it somewhere,
She paints the wall when she runs out of canvas.
The world is an oil painting to her.
Breath
Cherry blossoms fall from the sky,
they float happily on the water.
This is a town on the water.
The air is mist over cold water.
I never want to see this place die.
Breath.
I click my fingers and fire springs out of them like lighter.
It rolls over my arms like a tidal wave-
This is too real.
Breath.
Breath. 
I can feel the wicker fence but it feels distantly of fabric. 
Breath.
Breath.
My name is-
My name is-
I have too many faces
There is no tether pulling me back.
My sister looks at me with big brown eyes, she smells like Jasmine-
I don’t have a sister.
I don’t think I have a sister.
My skin is fragmenting
it wants to let all of me loose.
Let me be completely unmade.
I turn,
I am 20. At 12 I set myself on fire.
I turn.
I am 16. At 17 I will try to die.
I turn.
I turn.
My name is-
My name is-
Nobody. I have no anchor. I am free, I am free-
I pull.
I breath in.
Turn my palms down.
The dim hum of my computer can be heard.
My name is-
My name is-
I break the circuit with my knee. 
I breath in.

- Curls 101
This poem is very personal to me, please be kind.

Spoken Word Poetry: Not To Be

Recording of my poem here:
http://curlspoetry101.tumblr.com/post/111866164087/the-edge

Poetry: The Edge

Recording of my poem here:
http://curlspoetry101.tumblr.com/post/114346887447/madness

(Very proud of this one)

Poetry: Madness

Brief transcription for anyone who wants to just read this:

So when I wrote Teenagers two years ago, I didn’t expect it to get popular. I’ve re-written it since, and I’ll record the new, more concise version soon...Probably.
Teenagers was a rant. I’ve written poetry a million times better, but I don’t think I’ll ever write something that people have found so accessible and relatable as that. It’s not a good poetry, but y’know I’ve never been known for my skill, I’m known for my honesty- and that poem is honest. All my poetry is. It’s brutally honest, even if it means making myself look like shit.
I hope, in some way, that poem helped you. And if it didn’t- from the author two years later - it gets so much fucking worse before it gets better, but I’m tentatively learning how to believe that it might.
And I wanted to really really briefly address why I deleted `She` as I’ve gotten a few questions about it. There are two reasons
1) the person it was about was dangerously close to finding it at the time and I was still in love with them
2) The person who it was about came out as trans and is no longer a `She`. The person it’s about no longer exists
There will be more love poems on this account I’m sure. Most of them sad, but I’ll upload them anyway. Thank you to everyone who listens to my poetry. I hoped it did something for you. The only thing I will promise is that my poetry will never stop being honest. Oh, and by the way. I wanted you to know that I believe in you. I don’t know where you’re going, but keep going. 

Thank you for all the messages of support I've ever gotten. 

A Thank-You Message about `Teenagers`, why I deleted `She` and a promise.

SPOILERS FOR EPISODE 40 OF CRITICAL ROLE

`Last of Her Kind`

I am a woman of the earth.
A woman of woodland wanderlust.
A woman of wisps of willow 
A woman of wandering water and flowing streams.
A woman of feather falling flower petals
A woman of free falling. 
A woman of fleeting footsteps,
A woman of morning fog.
A woman of the whistling wind
A woman of curling vines, and curling lips
A woman of whispering smiles and rose water.
A woman of sunflower
A woman of ivy fingertips.
A woman of outstretched palm.
A woman of heart-sleeve.
A woman of household hearth.
A woman of heat-
A woman of break-
A woman of broken pot-
A woman of broken world-
A woman of world torn open
I am a woman on fire. 
A woman of flame hair
A woman of flame heart
A woman of volcanic 
A woman of granite spike fingernails
A woman of burning hands.
A woman of cracked earth
A woman of split sky
A woman of spark stone
A woman of soul stone
A woman of search
A woman of start over
A woman of last.
A woman of lonely.
A woman of lost.
A woman of lost world, lost people,
Last people. 
A woman of world-too-big, too bad
A woman of lasting.
A woman of last. 
This world has never seemed so vast
So vacant. So vicious.
So vapid.
So much like I could reach out my hands and find 
nothing
I am a woman out of reach
Out of breath.
Out of blame
Out of roots
Out of place
Out of time.
I am a woman lost
I am a woman, last of her kind
With fire in her hands
and the earth falling apart in her fingers
Last of her kin

Please do not repost or quote my poetry without crediting me. I do not do collabs. Thank you Matthew Mercer for making me suffer so much that I wrote this

SWP - Last of Her Kind

`I don't want to go into more detail because what if you mistake this poem for an instruction manual? / I don't know how to talk about the rabbit hole without accidentally inviting you to follow me down it`
- Blythe Baird, Relapse

sometimes, the worst thing you can do is scream your sorrows to the universe, because someone may think screaming is the default state of being. happiness is real. i'm sorry that i made it seem like the opposite was true

spokenwordcurls101

Popular tracks