TEACH THE BOY TO CRY (OUTRO)

People think the deconstruction of a man is some loud violent occurrence,

This outpour of bitterness towards the world,

And in reality the deconstruction of a man is a silent film....

A common surgical procedure that the world didn't know it was trained to do,

The breaking point of a boy is the world's quietest natural disaster,

As a man, there is no such thing as being stuck between a rock and a hard place

You either use the stones at rock bottom to build a way out,

Or you get buried by them....

Ain't nobody coming to save you,

The entire world is trying to construct you into it's perfect little image,

And the people around you are the ones who fuel the process of your manufactured masculinity,

Some of us are going to make it through assembly,

But we need to watch out for our defective counterparts,

Because the whole world is going to use their flaws to define all of us,

Luckily most effective product is aware of it's own shortcomings and tends to destroy itself given enough time alone with it's imperfections,

This abridged explanation of the process is how you become a man, or a monster

Everybody knows what a monster does,

Everybody judges the monster, nobody questions it's creator,

Some of us are manufactured to make light of our peril, with jokes if you will,

Male comedians are magicians in this way,

How they take their pain and airbrush it into something laughable...

Hee Hee, haha

Joke about a failed suicide,

The crowd laughs, the curtains close,

The comedian drinks all the way home....

A man's tears are just funny that way,

How they have to be translated to be accepted,

How they have to be transcribed into an art form to be worthy of observation,

How you have to, How you have to BLEED artistically to become a worthy topic of conversation,

Funny, how we can joke about a man's misery

But nobody taught the boy to cry,

But they taught him how to fight,

Nobody tucked him in at night, so he doesn't sleep at night,

Nobody offers protection to the protectors,

Nobody provides the providers with the provisions,

Nobody looks after the overseer,

Nobody has ever tried to guide the man who steers,

Everybody judges the weak men,

Nobody checks on the strong ones,

Only other men know how subtle a difference before the transition,

Nobody taught the boy to cry, so he would do it at all the wrong times,

In the barber chair, getting casket sharp remembering the funeral of a failed relationship,

In the grocery aisle, breaking down because he's weighed down by the tears collecting in his baggage at a soccer game,

Remembering what it was like to be a boy running towards a goal,

Most men will only experience unconditional love from their mothers,

And some of us don't even get that...

Most of us have never even felt appreciation,

Or respect, without conditions or hidden intentions,

We don't know what it sounds like to hear,

"I see you, and i'm proud of you, i'm glad you're here you really make a difference."

Yet the expectation is to constantly be displaying the strength and love that the world

Is hesitant in conveying we're expected to have a thick skin but get judged if it turns to a hard shell,

The first step in being a man, is ignoring the hunger,

Because yes, boy you gonna be starving,

Starved of attention, starved of affirmation,

Starved of love, starved of being told that you are enough...

Step two, in being a man is comfortability with replaceability,

You are only as good as you are useful,

You are only as valuable as you are needed by others,

Should there ever come a day boy, where you fail to provide everybody with a smiling face,

Then do not be surprised when they say "All men do is take up space"

And you are swiftly replaced.

Step three, in being a man, is overcoming your fear of the fire, because almost everything you will ever try to build,

Will go up in flames, relationships, careers, hobbies, and yes, you are always to blame,

Step four in being a man, is understanding by the time you finally get all the right answers,

These questions will have already changed,

You might achieve the strength of herculean fiction, trying to balance the weight of all these contradictions,

"Be a man" they say, definition: unknown,

Description: keep changing

We men, so empty, so irritable, so this so that,

We get told what we are so much we've accepted,

That who we are, ain't even up to us,

The blame is always on us, regardless.

One guilty man's actions requires an innocent man's explanation,

Otherwise you're all guilty by gender association,

There are four times as many male suicidal ideation because it's been hammered in our head that wer're falling short of our societal expectations...

Imagine being in a world of hurt for a hundred different reasons during a nationwide emasculation season,

There is a unique brand of sadness that follows being hated, without reason,

It ain't no secret, while over 30 percent of us have attempted to stop breathing,

Nobody even mentions the men who have succeeded,

As the saying goes "Every failure is one step closer to a successful attempt"

There is no such thing as an attempted suicide, a man's soul dies long before his body has a chance to realize,

A man with an old soul is just a boy who contemplated going ghost,

For every women that suffers the same fate, four men will follow her to the grave...

And I try to hide the stats from the poet, because he might romanticize them,

He might mistake this tragedy for a love story,

He might write a poem in place for the suicide notes that were never left behind,

Because nobody taught him otherwise...

So who's going to teach these boys to cry? While their still alive,

A man with nothing, to lose will view everything as something to take,

A child that isn't embraced by the village, will burn the village down.

And he will stare, as everything that didn't love him back,

Contorts, and cracks.

He will ease his way into the fire, until he

Finally

Feels

Some warmth.........

 

Message to anyone who needs this,

You are mighty, you are a warrior,

You are powerful, you are strong,

You are loved.

Don't let anyone take that from you,

Don't let people take you're feelings, and crush them.

Don't bottle up you're emotions and take them out on someone else,

Don't respond with violence unless needed,

Life can be hard, but

You are capable.