I find it hard to put into words

(perhaps I just can't understand)

why I don't trust you.

Something about that

lurking look,

and those silhouette eyes

make me want to rip apart the machine you've so readily

become.

Eyes locked forward

with manufactured hair

tan limbs and that shy smile.

All you think of is

making the grade

(all the pageantry makes me ill)

it all seems so important.

But I do wonder if all the work;

the shallow laughs and hallow smiles

aren't just to make us all feel a little better?

(how we've always strived to make them believe).

We used to say how we'd never be one of them.

We were different somehow

all the suffering

and abnormalities had shaped us

in ways no one would understand.

And yet here we are just a few years older.

I find myself a cynic

laughing at my own idealism.

A few years

(and pounds)

later;

I can still put on my jaded mask as well as the best.

But that idealistic boy

that dreamed of changing the world

pen in hand.

Seems to be

drowning

in your 21st century realism.

I look at my nephew

(one year has just barely passed him by)

with his pretty blond hair,

and blue eyes that make the old ladies sigh.

And I hope

that that the world may have a chance yet.

And I know

that he'll never follow in our footsteps.

He'll grow with all the amenities we could never afford.

He'll know what it means wake to a mother's loving face.

He'll never see his father struggle to provide.

He'll never feel that he just doesn't fit.

(and if he doesn't he'll know it has nothing to do with him).

I always thought that it was because I simply wasn't.

But I know now

that no matter what

it was all because I never let myself be.