What’s It Like To Be Your Kid?

What’s it like to be your kid?
To exist merely for academic bids
Whose purpose is merely to grow up and work
Earn status for the family and that’s his whole world?

What’s it like to be your kid?
To get A’s at school but still get hit?
With your excuse being that she looks like her dad
Whom you’d pushed away because you drove him mad?

What’s it like to be your kid?
With a face full of tears and mouth full of spit?
Pleading for you not to rage
While tears only provoke you more and more each day?

What’s it like to be your kids?
To be deprived of basic human needs?
To restrict them from having their own rooms or even beds,
Forcing them to share it with a slave you disrespect?

What’s it like to be your kids?
To be told every day that they’re “pieces of shit”?
Then not stand up for themselves as that’s what you’d expect
Even though their innocent lack of vengeance is not what you’d respect

What’s it like to be your kids?
Constantly being blamed for your choices and bullshit?
Being told it’s their fault that they were born?
As you guilt them into rejoicing in being torn and forlorn?

What’s it like to be your kid?
To go on social media and accidentally see his parents’ naked pics?
To witness his mom and dad promoting promiscuity online
Then wonder why he’s being bullied at school all the time?

What’s it like to be your kids?
Spending every minute just wishing for a bit
Of humanity, of space, of emotional maturity,
Or perhaps hoping you’d pass out from the wine and whiskey?

What’s it like to be your kid?
Knowing that his father is a gambler and a cheat?
A father who never loved his own mother let alone his own wife
Yet insisted on having kids to satisfy someone else’s idea of a life

What’s it like to be your kids?
Being told that taking breaks is for the weak who quit
Being yelled at every day about how much you do ‘for’ them
Then deny the true atrocities of what you’ve done ‘to’ them

What’s it like to be your kid?
Being brainwashed into rationalizing how abuse will strengthen his grit?
Being manipulated into believing that violence is love
And that anything less than aggressive will never be enough?

What’s it like to be your kids?
To spend every day just plotting to leave?
Simply because there’s no room for them to grow
In a tiny concrete jungle you force them to accept as “home”

What’s it like to be…… you?
To be a broken sack of baggage and issues
To have birthed your kids merely because you feared abortions
Forcing them to compensate for all your shortcomings?

What’s it like to be…… you?
To be so unaware that what you’ve been through
Is merely a replica of your generational trauma and abuse,
And that instead of unbecoming it, your kids’ trauma is now…… you?

MG