Prescribed Propaganda

By the time I got to high school,

I had racked up about 3

months worth of crying myself to sleep.

I used to wake up every morning, drag myself to the mirror, and squeeze my nose..

hoping.. that it would maybe shrink faster than my self esteem was.

I tried blow drying my bottom lip to reduce its hang time until it cracked

like dust bowl dried, God abandoned crop fields.

In the Spring time, I was the only one out of my friends to not take off

their shirt when we swam.

Blamed my lazy eye for why I didn't see what my mother never stopped

insisting was lying underneath this skin of mine. 

This skin may not had been ordained with as many war wounds as the other boys,

but it damn sure didn't seem to hold as much value in the eyes of courting lionesses.

I have had my appearance dismantled and set on lab tables..

For all the would be scientist to dissect, bisect, and rearrange

Until they could figure out whether I looked the way I did becase of 

Heredity.. God.. or by the malice of fate.

I used to hate Valentine's Day. The one day where my loneliness seemed to disappear..

only to mock me from the shoulders of teddy bears being handed to the same scientist 

who once told me that I looked like the very thing that made them smile, but..

I just ... just lacked the aggression.. the testoserone.. the attraction..

But see then I had a renaissance..

Not of the mind or of the body, but of the soul.

When my heart gained the audacity to tell my mind that it was

acting more like a heart than a mind,

It clicked.

Clicked like proud African tongues in the face of foreign ships,

I realized.. that in order for me to reach the top of the mountain,

I had to avalanche my insecurities. 

And with that.. I was able to change every negative interger in my life to a positive one.

I was finally able to incorporate the math I had deemed useless in class into life.

For if a really negative person says a really negative thing about you, don't freight. 

They're just positively hating! and waiting on you to forget, that your ancestors had

empires bowing at their feet. That they stood proudly in the Sun and

Put every flaw that they bequeathed to you on display for all to see and know that

how even with flaws and

unwritten laws, you can be ruler. You can be Pharaoh. You can be you.

The bullshit that I put up with for sooo long now.. I can finally say that I am grateful for it.

Because the stench of decaying friendships helped my lazy eye to open much more than

they wanted it to.  So, yes.. I can clearly see the poorly hidden little boys and girls inside of

you all.

Who have found false self worth in mommy's

lingerie draw and daddy's pornographic DVD collection..

and its funny how despite all of the hypotheses concocted and.. and experiments failed,

that.. that all of those scientist are now finding asylum on the same street corners

that they swore they graduated from.

By the time.. I got to college.. I had racked up so many good days and nights that the

horizon

that lay restless on the edge of my tomorrows never seemed to stop magnetising me.