The inevitable step between innocence and knowledge
is a place where neither exists.
It is a place through which everyone must travel the wrong way
before understanding the right one.
It is a war zone and a wasteland
but can be a dream if you allow yourself to fall asleep.
It must be traveled alone
with the whole world peeping over your shoulder.
It cannot be understood afterwards
because while you’re in it
you can’t understand anything else.
This foreign land offers half-truths and bold-faced lies
but there is some truth somewhere
if you decide to look for it.
It is after the place where freedom is not wanted
yet not quite the place where it is attained.
It is where most bright eyes die,
so-called reality having committed regicide.
Greatness is proven
when bright eyes change reality’s ways
before its ways destroy all.
Stress takes its place as chief consultant
and Acne decides to be the joker
when Misunderstanding inherits the crown.
Sleep is the labourer
while Hormones and Homework rule.
A lost dragon named Puff
wanders through piles of string and ceiling wax
and stuff that doesn’t look quite so fancy anymore.
The in-between stage.
The half-time show.
Not adult wishing to be child
Not child wishing to be adult
Just teenager wanting everything
wanting nothing
wanting something more
anything more
than this.
Searching sleepless nights and meaningless days
for an unknown substance
a life
a thought
a sanctuary
a salvation
or maybe just a sandwich.
The place between asleep and awake
between shock and relief
between trauma and recovery.
The war that separates peace from peace.
The question that makes a fail or a pass.
Twin hunters called Science and Sense.
A mix of birth and death
numbness and pain
love and hate
thought and speech
but never either, iether, or
nothing more
than confusion embodied.
All potential, all emotion.
Fully man and fully child.
Responsibly crazy.
Crazily sane.
Insanely inspiring.
Full of ideas, despairs, feelings
resistance.
The heart becomes the decision center.
The brain hibernates.
Bodily proportions are those of a child’s painting.
Coordination suffers.
Character is found and shaped,
destroyed and rebuilt,
hardened.
Enraged, encaged sages.
All bound by shackles of self-image.
Not stuck in a monkey’s cage
but in a rat’s maze
but all you have to do
is click your heels thirteen times
recite the equation of a hyperbola with all imaginary roots
rub your head
pat your back
and fly.
Congratulations.
You’re still a teenager.