its like i have no control
I thought I was no longer thirteen, looking for a thing to be;
I thought I’d found and come to terms with everything in me;
I thought I walked with ease and grace in adult reality -
But one word from you One look One thought
And again I am thirteen,
And again I am crying and aching and smarting and hurting
In that dizzy bipolar world of dizzy joy and pain
And I am that small petty creature again
Of whose pockmark shell I’d thought I’d broken free.
Just what is that power you have over me?
I loved like an adult, reserved and discreet,
I look you direct in the eye when we meet,
I speak the same to you as do all the rest...
I won your respect by doing more than my best.
But it was the adult who won your respect
Not the petty thirteen-year-old by silliness wrecked
Whom bear all of us marked on Scantrons as fit
For being stuffed full of knowledge, not shoveling it.
When I leave this hall corner for another hall
Will the petty weanling still follow and keep me in thrall
At the push of a switch by other bored stares
Of whose power their eyes are held unawares?
“Leave now,” said Smeagol, “and never come back.”
But how can you kill it? How do you attack?
For I cannot follow it where it will hide
In its nest of broken vanities on the swamp of pride...
I thought I’d found and come to terms with everything in me;
I thought I walked with ease and grace in adult reality -
But one word from you One look One thought
And again I am thirteen,
And again I am crying and aching and smarting and hurting
In that dizzy bipolar world of dizzy joy and pain
And I am that small petty creature again
Of whose pockmark shell I’d thought I’d broken free.
Just what is that power you have over me?
I loved like an adult, reserved and discreet,
I look you direct in the eye when we meet,
I speak the same to you as do all the rest...
I won your respect by doing more than my best.
But it was the adult who won your respect
Not the petty thirteen-year-old by silliness wrecked
Whom bear all of us marked on Scantrons as fit
For being stuffed full of knowledge, not shoveling it.
When I leave this hall corner for another hall
Will the petty weanling still follow and keep me in thrall
At the push of a switch by other bored stares
Of whose power their eyes are held unawares?
“Leave now,” said Smeagol, “and never come back.”
But how can you kill it? How do you attack?
For I cannot follow it where it will hide
In its nest of broken vanities on the swamp of pride...