Hell's Handbasket

We live in a mire.
Our minds tangled like spider webs,
Awaiting unwary prey to fly into our midst,
Never once thinking that, perhaps,
We need to find it ourselves,
Instead of it coming to us.

It’s an endless war, we fight,
Brother upon brother, sisters battling sisters,
Until all that’s left is a scoured wasteland,
With friends left lying out in no-man’s land, their hearts torn open,
Bleeding their feelings, their thoughts, their inner life,
Like a fountain of gushing emotion,
Out onto the muddy, war-torn ground.

Rumors are their blades, your secrets their poison,
And before you know it, you’ve got a dagger in your ribs.
Religion won’t save you, they hate that as well.
So what if you’re smart, heaven help you if you’re not,
Still you’re battered, day and night
The relentless hammering of that stone maul upon
The shell of your very core.
And just when you think they’ve finally given up,
They throw down the weapon, and look,
They’re finishing the job with their bare hands.

Before you learn how to walk,
You must learn how to breathe, but there is no air
In this suffocating cellophane bag that is the atmosphere of our lives.
And the only ones that seem to give you hope, are the ones
That thrashed you like a rag doll, until you gave up that
faint flicker of reality.
There is no way out. We all live in a chrome steel jail cell,
Whether we realize or not,
We may be the inmates, the guards, or the judge that persecutes,
But we all call it by the same, clichéd name:
High school.