I just wanted to be your friend and now look what you made me do

I'm a bookworm
And I'm better than you 
I know Holden Caulfield and Sartre, too 
I love Oxford commas and I've read Camus 
(Yo, tell 'em Jean-Paul: hell is you) 

That, by the way, was a lit allusion 
You know, with an a, not like your illusion 
The delusion where you think that you talk real good 
The delusion that you think that you run yo' hood. 

Ah... Silly little white girl wants to write a rap song 
Lip gloss and bobby socks, don't she know where she from? 
Knows a song by Emimen, thinks that she could hang with him 
Turns out rap's an easy game, turns out that she's better than 

You, and you, and yes, you, too 
Misappropriating culture with the worst of you 
Too rich for politics, punk rock--she can't handle it 
Pays her own way, ain't know way you think this bitch legit. 

Look at them teeth, did her mama put braces on 'em? 
Listen how she talk at you, homegirl musta went to college! 
Ooh she think she flossy fresh, ooh she think she fresh to death 
Get this rich bitch off the stage, somebody make her act her age 

 (...This is the part where the rap breaks down) 

This is the Brass Rail, where we drink until we fuck each other 
Pretending that we give a damn, pretending that we have another 
option, or choices in life, 
That we aren't all small sad people with our throats to the knife 

That we aren't all angry, or desperate with fear 
Searching for truth in the dregs of our beer 
Just one piece of wisdom, one message of hope? 
But there isn't, Bukowski, not even one pithy trope. 

So fuck you to the posers who say that I don't belong 
Because my words are too big and my vision too long 
And if you don't like me because I like to wear skirts 
With flowers and buttons and polka dot shirts 

I'd like to say in this last little rhyme, 
Just one more thing in these final lines: 
I'm a bitch just like you, I'm angry and raging 
I'm young and I'm dumb and think grunge is amazing 

So pick something better, don't hate 'cause I'm pretty 
Or saddled with options my tax bracket gave me. 
Hate because I'm a mirror you can see yourself in 
Hate because I'm a reminder that your life's a dead end.

Jug Wine

I tried to write a love poem,
tried to tell you I am certain in
our happily-ever-after-till-tomorrow

(tripping over baby-I-love-yous and
let’s-stay-in-bed-together-forevers)
but these words catch behind the

scream I cannot bring myself to bear,
the fruit of a maybe life with you hung up on
the certain harvest of my quiet life alone.

for where you are settled,
you are certain,
and you want me now and for forever

I am skulking in the railyard
waiting for the next train out of town
carrying a bag loaded with the words I know not how to say,

loaded with regret,
weighted down by fear,
because running feels better than letting down walls

because running is familiar,
because I love yous so often end
with I told you sos and

one day you may wake up next to me and
turn your face the other way when
you see me naked and only as I am.

And all I am certain of today is
my fear that you will find me out,
my anxiety over failing to be good enough,

the list of failures I could read to you
(past present and most certainly future)
longer than the train that will carry me away,

the terror building in the back of my throat
louder than the whistle of the midnight express
I have always known I could depend on

your welcome though unsettling attention something I could
carry buried with my doubts until they rotted in the dark together,
and I drunk forever on this sick forgotten fruit.