Implications Of The Prologue

Sometimes it feels like I went to high school
with the whole world all at once.
The banners in the hallway were a symbol
of the box we all were stuck in.
The tests were centered around movies
we’d have to watch to find the answers,
and they would almost never be there,
so clearly we were getting what we paid for.
Everyone spent their time with the wrong people,
just to find out it had always been too late,
and then they stared up at the sky as all their parents
questioned why they always stayed awake
and wandered out at night.

They got into infinite fights with no winners
or losers just days off to think about how much
they never wanted to go back. Always on the attack,
there was a mascot that fell in the stands
irreparably hurting his hearing so now the world
was always loud but over all the words
considered most important.
They liked the same bands but could never
afford the steep price of tickets when they’d all
come through on annual tours,
that probably didn’t exist anymore,
and the rich kids would park their fancy cars
in places where they couldn’t keep them clean.

No one ever sold out so I never
understood why they would bother
with this worthless county of people
all afraid to get paid or too stupid
to see that there could have been so much more.
There are commonalities among all our apologies
as we attach ourselves to an old world dying out.
We lay in our beds thinking quickly
about the mandatory aspects of the future
as we sink into the floorboards
only to wake up and realize it was all
just one gigantic waste of time.
I can’t remember her face when I try to
and when I don’t there’s only ever been a trace.
We walked across that stage like it meant anything
but it was really just a predetermined lie,
like the age old words, I love you,
written crudely by an airplane
in the sky.