Prayers For The Outcasts Poem by Kevin Patrick

Here's a prayer to the freaks, the geeks and the outcasts
You diamond pariahs, and unwashed gems
You who've earned a lifetime of scars
And learned to wear adolescence as your albatross
Here's wishing good luck to you kids sitting duck
I know that hell is waiting for you
And that it's announced in a storm of school bells.
You'll be gamboling to that abattoir of moral brick and mortar
The one that waves a flag that proudly marks your grave
Where all your nightmares are just a preview

Another school year is another hunting season
And you'll be the unwilling star and prime cut attraction

Recess games will become an impromptu fox hunt
Where you will be dodging the jeers of rabid hounds
They will claw you with insults, abuse and humiliation
Invent fresh names that will cut down into your pride
Some will gather in packs, as they plan their attack
And teachers will watch, as they make you their snack
If you're smart enough stay away from the main grounds
Hide in the corners, the outskirts, and off the tracks
If you're lucky no one will find you,
And you can finely fine a piece of sanity.

Classrooms you have to start thinking strategically
That's where the cruelty is more subtle insidiously
Its where they look for weaknesses in your armor
Any mistakes, and your fate has a date at the stake
Never raise your hand to the answer of a question
If you're wrong, they'll laugh, if your right they'll spit
Never sit at the front; it crushes your line of sight
You need to monitor your enemies, that means everyone
You can never risk having your back against them
It just makes it easier to stick in the knife.

The real tests don't come with a pen and paper
It comes in your ability to bend or stand unyielding


Hallways will be more suffering for the girls
That's where the poison comes in through the whispers
It starts with a taint of a tumor of a rumor
And spreads like a plague of scarlet letters
I've seen the destruction of a good reputation
Simply through a word said or unsaid.
Men might beat you, but women will eat you
And between girls they don't leave a bone
In the hallways you'll learn everything about politics
More so then attending a classroom in civics
So stay out of the hallways, and become an enigma

Your limits will be tested day in and day out
You'll learn firsthand the meaning of Fight or flight
How to walk on landmines of exposed flaws
Or to sanitize the wounds of your raw nerves
Between the cold war of classrooms
And bloody battlefields of school grounds
You'll have to learn to die every single day
And get up every morning to repeat the parade


So here's to the ones who live in the sidelines,
the ones born to be punching bags
and win prizes of humiliation
its not going to be easy,
drowning
when people are throwing water one you.

The only valuable education school teaches
Is humanity stinks




But learn this.
you will survive; you will adapt,
you will learn to take insults like armor
and take that pain, and turn it into a shield.
Fold the jokes and rumors into an impenetrable trunk
And lock them in the attic where they become buried rage
They may try to bring you down, but will never be their clown


Every pain is a lesson, in how to become strong
Keep refuge in the things that protect you
Find shelter in the world of imagination
Happiness is for real survivalist


No matter what happens
And they try to pull your strings
you will never become their puppet

So here's for the fat kids, the scrawny kids, the minority kids,
the autistic kids, the foreign kids, the trans kids, the gay kids,
the sick kids, the poor kids, the ones who never fit,
and anyone whose back has been, (and will be) ,
against a wall, learn not fall

Outsiders united by alienation
Together, you're wounds make up a nation


good luck to all of you.
make your damage beautiful