notyou

       kill yourself in your hurried clamor to be
unique
   cookie-cutter reproduction of
            every page of every magazine,
         every identical snowflake in brandnames
     too cool to dance, you
       overhigh-contrast side-cropped icons
   with names too grand for the songs you walk

         you scream
  your fabricated dramas in converse,
     your self-diagnoses in armwarmers,
       your addiction to the clever one-liners in pastel hoodies
            in the desperate hope that you'll drown out
       the knowledge of utter normalcy,
   abysmal mediocrity:
     you, quintessence of average,
         clearly showing through your smothering eyeliner.


     too self-pleased with devil-may-care sneers
         & preoccupation of the next lionized emotional scar,
   too enraptured with the silly vanity of your
       flash of flush of
     youth & "beauty"--
         raucous hollow declamations,
                   a vacuum to envelop knowledge only garnered
   far too late--


you are not even remotely as important
as you so vehemently believe yourself to be.


         your copernican revolutions
             will come someday not so soon;
     then you will writhe tormented
       under a sense of perspective,
             your deepest wish fulfilled--
                   an actual reason for unhappiness.

       never glancing at your mascara blood of self-examination,
     unheeding your cries for an audience as
             you finally begin to claim your humanity,
         we will say,
"what of it?"
                   and perhaps in silence you might understand


but presently
         four timezones away
   your keening fingernails-on-blackboard screech
       will still unwillingly reach
     my spine & i will shudder

             to think of
                   you