It’s a beautiful spate of words and lust
collected from anguish at desperate trust
from neurotransmitters too ready to quit
(reality’s different; they don’t seem to fit)

The girls and the guys, all too alone
create for themselves a broken home;
abandon their hopes to a night on a couch
with a guy who can’t help his endearing slouch

And they’re smart but their grades cannot compete
with their nights spent alone with Brandon and Pete;
Their parents can’t tell with their children don’t know
and love often takes before it can bestow

So they curse and do worse but it’s all just a phase
until parties arrive and that magical gaze
from the guy in the corner with black, too-long hair
with cuts on his skin from when life was unfair

disdisillusions the sucralose girl
until she confuses true love with a whirl
and down, down she curls, her pain reinforced
by the guy who bemoans his (gasp!) lack of a Porsche

and the girl (who’s real pretty but nobody sees),
so low in the throes of a deadly disease,
like many before her, puts keyboard to Word
and writes something millions before her have heard

Commemorative of a time in the world
when nothing could comfort the sucralose girls
with iPods, erotica, passion, and loss
(it’s what they did have that created their cross)

“But how do you know; how can you be sure?”
“It’s here in the Panic!, the fiction, The Cure,
and millions of Xangas,” I might just reply,
“So how do I know? I’m a sucralose guy.”