The State of the Union

In the waning days of a stifling summer, capping off a miserable year of school, Gem is in need of some soul-searching.  He starts another entry in a vast journal that maybe one day he’ll let somebody else read.

  

[Gem]

Do you feel trapped by your insecurities?

Pressured to know, in this very moment, who you’ll grow to be?

Do you need to withdraw, analyze, and evaluate

But they say answer now or you’ll be too late?

 

I can’t go on like this, despondence consumes the bliss

A demoralizing state of the union

I’ve tried so hard to be what the world wants of me

Yet I still don’t seem to fit

The state of the union is bleak

 

Are you confused, pulsating with rage?

Lustful and restless, afraid to turn the page?

Are you scared of the beast within, do you try to hold it back?

Do you find the more you keep it inside, the more it wants to attack?

 

I don’t challenge convention, don’t want the attention, but I’m a black sheep by design

So I don’t confide, I keep it all inside, and you keep thinking that everything’s fine

In learning to swim and flow with the tide I lost myself along the way

He lays bare in the dark somewhere and won’t likely live through the day

The cries grow fainter with each passing hour

I have to go before it’s too late