I consider this to be one of the angstiest of the teen angst poems that I've ever written, and it dates to March of 1991. It’s likely painfully obvious that this was written at an especially low time in my life. I had graduated High School several months previous, and was stuck working no less than three low-paying, part time jobs at the same time because there was simply nothing more substantial out there.

Likewise, I was at the very end of my teens, and well aware of the fact that I was now at the age, where I was supposed to start taking on adult responsibilities of careers and relationships, yet I was stuck in work and social environments where respect was not only unobtainable, but even simple, common courtesy was awful thin on the ground. Funny how some things never change, isn't it? :P

I look back on this piece, twenty-one years later, and I chuckle both at how painfully naïve it seems now, and how, at the same time, greater experience with adult failures and frustrations make some of the meanings much deeper than I could have ever predicted at the time I wrote it.