Addicted to e-cigarettes marketed to
Broken minds that barely function,
Comparing themselves to beautiful models that
Don’t look healthy, the next post reads
Earth is dying please donate
For the sake of youth that have
Grown up scared in schools while learning
How to do trigonometry, but
In reality uncontrollably checking
Just in case they replied,
Knowing it was read 30 minutes ago, with
Loving parents who struggle to stay
Married, arguing while you play
Never have I ever in the basement
“Of course I have snuck out” was a lie because
Physical freedom is limited with life 360,
Quietly trying drugs to feel something while
Ranking girls on the internet
Sexualizes adolescents with no retribution for
Those hiding behind their screens,
Under one nation that's forced to pick a side
Validating an altered perception
Which keeps us distracted, like
Xanax being romanticized on television,
You know what it’s like to be in generation
Z.

My Dad taught me to always look a man in his eye when he spoke
He said, “Holden look me in the eye and show me some respect”
But what if the man's not looking back, I often thought

A man afraid of the world looking back at him
Or maybe just a man afraid of a world looking through him
Yesterday I stopped counting after fifteen

Fifteen people who looked away you see
The eye is a curious wanderer, nervous of what it may find
God forbid the judgment of another wandering eye

Yet we walk past souls everyday as though their eyes aren't ours
Like if I looked, and you looked too, something might just happen
Something more, something, something like love

If you even believe in something like that
So, I encourage you to look, to look back
And to keep looking

With 8 billion people in the world, how many can you look at?
But more importantly how many can look back at you?

Describe yourself in one word
A question for a kid
Who’s unconscious of growing older
Single file line one after another.

Stressed as time clicks down,
As multiplication problems remain undone
Unaware of what the future holds
Yet holding on for dear life.

Unknowingly walking into the abyss
Just like everybody else
Funneling into adulthood
Around and around and around.

The kid answers.
Unique.

A painting of a single line, unbothered
that you a simple viewer
could have “Totally painted that bro”.

A Pollock splattered around the corner
as a spider lays his web in the wind,
confused which eighth eye is lying to him.

The viewer, unable to overcome misconception.
Convinced their opinion is right,
They only look left.

Acknowledge the instillation of paint,
prime as the location of each tree.
Few planted specifically, many unknown.

To capture a moment in time
Is love at first sight
Obsessed with the vision
Plummeting further into a paused reality

As the flash casts light
Fake smiles light up the room
Faces remain trapped
Waiting for untold stories

Press the button
No matter the reason
A hidden canvas revealed
Nailing the complexion within