Let me begin with a little preface

Let me bring you all up to date

With the reason these pissed off words in my mind

Pounced onto this page

Here I go

Some jerkwad

Butt munch

Self-absorbed dillhole

With a crippling fear of having his hair cut

Who refuses to let me cuss

Had the audacity

To suggest for me to cease writing immaturely

 

From lips of someone who

Has barely escaped his teens

Who at first glance

Appears to be perpetually grounded

At the age of 17

By his parents

Trapped inside a comfy cage of hoodies, beanies and jeans

How dare he pull the youth card on me

At least until he purchases some grown up pants

 

But I digress

Let me address

The two tiny words he recklessly used to describe my poetry

“Teenage Angst”

 

Excuse me?

Were you in a tragic skiing accident

That left the left side of your brain absent?

Oh wait… you’re probably just stupid

Or illiterate

Or utterly

Naively

Ignorantly

Unaware

Of the potency of hate

The word “teenager” contains

 

I would rather be called a child until I turn 18

Than be lumped together with the entitled, rebellious, selfish nation

Of today’s teen population

So if you don’t want to mysteriously wind up in that pile of red snow with a ski up your butt

Then please

Don’t use that word around me

 

Secondly, the adjective angst

Is synonymous to complaints

Never label a person’s art as whining

You wouldn’t point at a Picasso painting and pontificate

If he used so much blue

Because he possessed no one to cry to

About his hormonally haggard heart

Would you?

Please grant me

The same courtesy

 

There’s a reason why everything I write sounds the same

Because when I sit down with a pen and a page

I silt open a vein

I let it drain into each phrase

So when someone’s fists fill with the shards of shattered expectations

Or unintentionally crushed relations

One of my poems is patiently waiting

To provide reassurance in a whisper, softly saying

“You not the one only enduring this particular brand of pain”

 

I’m not suggesting

I deserve to rant about my problems

Since they’re smaller than a miniscule ant’s

I just know

Enough pain thrives in our world

To paint every inch of the sky red

If we let it

So if I can quench one fellow adolescents anguish

Even for a second

With a feeling of poetically synthesized friendship

Then I will

At least I will try

 

PS if you don’t cut your hair soon you’ll cease to look like a guy