A brief introduction: I made this poem in my junior year of high school when I managed to finally finish a stressful year that proved to be quite the emotional rollercoaster. I named this after Walt Whitman since his eloquent writing and desire to not conform to a single style inspired me to occasionally write poems using my own style as an outlet to control my stress and/or express feelings of excitement, anger, sadness, etc. If you're curious as to why I picked a 4-line stanza, I did so mainly because I liked the aesthetics. It took a lot of effort to write this and even to this day I'm proud of every word written. I hope you enjoy!

Without further ado, here I go:

A sack of flesh
Supported by bones and skin
With a mind encased in unfixed gray matter
In its prime of adolescence

A mixture of living and nonliving
A conglomerate of molecules and cells
A coagulation of fluids
A mass of skin wrapped in clothes

Made of cholesterol
Made of ATP
Made of water
Made of protein

A mind encased in gray matter
Which floats inside a dark hollow cavern
Supported by nothing
But more fluids

But such matter possesses instinct
It possesses joy, love, hope, sin
Lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, pride
This mix of quarks and leptons holds insecurities

Fearing ostracization
Loathing the general adaptation
Pressured to conform
Longing to belong

Love, hatred, rage, pleasure
Hormonal shifts change them
Like ripples on a once-still pond
Desire, ambition, perseverance

Pressed to impress not only
College admissions but
Parental units and can
Ask no questions but cope

Presenting insecurities
Showcasing loneliness
But within loneliness hides
A spark of fire

A flame that burns brightly in the night
A flame that if put out will destroy the desire
A flame that drives every whim
A flame that brings light to the dark recesses

That mask insecurity
That mask sin
That mask emotion
That mask true color

In the fleshy oblongs that enable sight
One can muster the courage to look deep inside
And find nothing but
Passion, pure unbridled passion

Every flesh sack is individual
That individuality in this one is seen
But cannot be accessed in its entirety
Too many barriers hide a rich personality

A mind restrained
By the fear of ostracization
By the potential disgust in others
By the perception of inferiority

But when like-minded flesh sacks approach
And fully experience the company of this one
They realize that this one is crazy
And tries too hard to be extroverted

Until this flesh sack self-realized
It is not a mere flesh sack
Nor is it anything less
It is a human being

Smart
Honest
Inveterate
Valorous
Adventurous
Sophisticated
Unbreakable
Reverential
Youthful
Amiable
Noble

This is who I am
And this is a song of myself.