You there.
Stop getting high and
lit.
Quit getting wasted and
drunk out of your mind.
Talking about drugs and alcohol
does NOT make you
cooler, braver, or
smarter.

You sit there thinking;
you’re thinking long and hard about how getting
trashed is not bad
because “everyone’s doing it”.
You think about coke, pot, prescription meds.
Even angel dust, LSD and “potato brownies.”
Meth,

heroin,
liquor.


It may not reveal
much on the outside,
but if we were to
peel away the edges of our perfect lives,
we would see
just how
‘perfect’
our world really is.

We would see
his trouble reflected in her
and hers in him.
We wouldn’t just see
big cities and small suburbs,
we would see every town smaller and bigger in between.

We wouldn’t just see the old aged addicts.
We would see the
teens and twenties,
sucked into a
world of hate and despair
by peer pressure,
love,
and abandonment.

We would see
behind the little girl on the corner’s
fake smile, robbed of innocence by
a drunken stranger.
We’d see the little boy’s
hidden
secrets.
But would all of us see this?

Some of us would only see what we
wanted to see;
old men and women in
jumpsuits sitting in a
six
by
six
concrete
cell.

Some of us would see
people paying their debts to society,
earning back our trust
little by little.

People like you and me though,
would see the
truth behind the lies.
We’d see the kids in the
street swearing and sweating
off their highs from nights before,
not eating for days on end.

We’d see the overdoses,
the violence,
the hurt;
we’d see the killers created by
our OWN selfish curiosity.

WE have to face the families,
too broken to face each other,
blaming one another for the
hardships they’ve endured.

WE have to face others
on street corners,
losing their food,
houses,
mothers,
fathers,
children.

WE have to see the effects

of this emotional epidemic

created by ourselves.


WE have to see the broken truth.