Kids Like Us
By Clinton Sammy Jr.
Poet, Clinton Poems
Kids like us,
we were not meant to wear
suits and ties,
or glass slippers and iced dresses.
We weren’t meant for fancy dinners
or boxed cinemas, or prom nights
where you’d kiss under the disco ball
at midnight.
See, kids like us,
we wear oversized, stained t-shirts
with cigarette burns on them.
There are bullet holes
in our pants that everyone looks through.
We don’t believe in love,
but we believe it will come.
We are meant for asteroids,
for fire rocks and dirty sand.
We were meant for war, to be as humans
but apart from them, we sit in a distanced gaze
and look on as the traffic lights blink.
We sing, dance, paint, write, create, sculpt,
but most importantly, we destroy.
We don’t go on picnics where the bread
is particularly a certain way, or the orange juice
is sweeter than the orange sun.
We hide in old abandoned mansions,
with dimmed chandeliers and drunk pianos.
We don’t travel the world, we hold the world by its neck
and it travels us, we are, we are to be.
We are the kids
who were never really kids,
but will always be kids.
—Clinton Sammy Jr