A Brat’s Manifesto
“How am I gonna pay the rent, sitting on my ass (on your face)”
As the lesser of two evils, a girl to a younger boy, it is time for the nineteen year olds and twenty-somethings with woes and wandering spirits to be understood by the middle-class parental figures that praise their suburban lives in a townhome and are stuck up the asses of the children left at home, after the older sibling, or siblings, have gone off to become doctors, lawyers, stoners, and dream-realists (or dream-negotiates). I have been a victim of a victim of partial empty nest syndrome; which leads to a fountain of bipolar handouts of luxuries and also of neglect and poverty.
“Do not get a job, focus on school, and your grades!”
But dearest mother everything in this town requires money, $$$, drugs, books, tobacco, food, the occasional trip to the cinema, let me have satisfying, stable employment!
“Wait till you come homes from school.”
Wait, what if I want to take summer classes, live here and have a life outside of “Home”; clusters of bored grown-up kids, commuters, and old parents?
“You are stressing me out, wait until your father comes home.”
Accurate?
I am currently without an ID card, a school ID card, and a debit card, I have no identity today, tomorrow, or the next day. Someone is walking around with two things with my address blatantly printed onto and under care of lamination, but no return, yet, and I don’t intend to see it again. The frustration! Scud punk fuckers! Old and shaking fucking bums! Feral Dogs! Anyone that walked along West Grace Street Friday night after 10pm, I expected better. A Brat can’t help but feel frustrated and confused when they seek to better their lives with a job and more school than necessary (or if necessary, someone would like to graduate on time, you know?) and the younger living at home, pampered and supported, can have hundreds dropped on them, their friends, 300 dollars on a computer system. I HAVE A FAILING COMPUTER SYSTEM. Explain! Explain why there is a leash around our necks; we are not walking, no treats, no trees, nothing to take a piss on, nothing! Your limitations on rent money are keeping me in a ghost-filled house taken right out of the Twilight Zone, if oddities and suspense were actually just trash bags, shit stains, and decomposing walls. Yet, you bring family members here to expose my living conditions and complain that it’s absolutely terrible, monsters or crack heads in the basement, but where is the progression?! HELP! HELP! I’M TRAPPED IN HERE WITH ZEUS SMASHING JARS ABOVE ME, COMPLAINING WHEN I HAVE SEXY SEX, THROWING THEIR QUIZNO’S BAGS ALL OVER THE HOUSE, FIGHTING LIKE DOGS, AND PUKING AND SHITTING ALL OVER THE BATHROOM FLOORS AND WALLS! RAISED BY WOLVES AND LOVED BY COCKROACHES, JESUS CHRIST! I digress. There is love in this strange wayward blindness towards our pain, but to be dependent while considered independent does no justice to either, no matter how hard it is to cut the umbilical cord that connects Us to You, it must be done in order for these kids to be able to do something for themselves now and for the rest of their lives, don’t leave us gasping for air like dying fish on a boardwalk because you died and taught Us nothing.
surpriseglance around the room
you're awake, hearing only yourself breathing heavily
dull roar of an alarm echos repeatly
your unconsicous savior
The images that were pieced together
glimpses of creatures, situations and tragedies
flash before you
leaving you sitting upright
translating, identifying...why?
the purpose for the pictures
that left you silently screaming and on edge in your dream country
after only a few seconds...pictures dull and fade
losing their vibrant colors and shapes
...slip back into safe reality
