some inner city teens
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1) when i'm talking to a boy i like
i get shy and my hands sweat and words
don't want to come out of my mouth
i feel bad because the boys say
i'm afraid of them i feel stupid
and i want to cry when a boy walks away
after i haven't talked with him
i think about it so much that i can't
go to sleep at night it reminds me
of the book i'm reading: the real you
2) if I could find the right girl i
would do my school work much better and
my gymnastics would be 10 times better
i just need love to give me courage
and the girl could take half the pressure
3) here in america it's very bad because
people don't use it right like the boys
who ask the girls to go to bed
with them and they say: "if I didn't love
you I wouldn't make love to you!" and
the girls like dummies believe them
4) i wish that all girls would say yes
whenever you ask them something
that they'd be men-lovers forever
and wouldn't break up or fight
5) at home we have lots of parent problems
because they don't give us the freedom we
want sometimes to tell our parents we have
problems but they don't trust us even one time
in my life i'd like my mother to trust me
6) a lot of parents beat their kids for no
reason maybe they're lonely or sick or maybe
they do it for fun but i don't understand
i know a woman named grace who's adopted
six kids from child abuse homes and she's
real strict with one of them and i don't like
karen myself in fact one day in math she
kept staring at me and i asked her what she
was looking at and she kept staring and i wanted
to punch her but i couldn't then another
time at church she told me to go to hell
right out loud so I told grace and karen got
the worst beating a child could ever get
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Poem by Janet Cannon
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Previously published in
Long Shot
(Long Shot Productions, New Brunswick, NJ)
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