My mother makes suggestions about how I should be
Whether breakfast or lunchtime or snack-time or tea,
And I mean it when I say it wouldn't really bother me,
If only her intentions weren't so easy to see.

"You should be more like Stan." she remarked one morning,
"He's polite and athletic and seldom needs scorning.
He's never caught misbehaving or ever suborning,
And when he walks past all the townsfolk are fawning."

"You should be more like Kenny." she said one afternoon,
"He's quiet and patient and makes girls at school swoon.
He doesn't speak till he's spoken to, and boy can he croon,
And he's brave in the face of inevitable doom."

"You should be more like Butters." she proclaimed one eve,
"He's good and humble and pure and naïve.
He's cute with his friends who are all make-believe,
And a lie is the one thing he could never conceive."

"You should be more like Kyle." she told me one night,
"He's smart and sweet and honest and bright.
He never smart-mouths or back-talks or puts up a fight,
And all of the neighbours say he's a delight."

I wish she'd be honest and say what she means.
She stitches words perfect but they break at the seams.
It's so see-through to me what she's wanting to say:
"You should be less like you, Eric. I hate you this way."


Author's Notes:

Poetry happened. I prefer prose to poems, because they aren't really my thing, but now and again poetic inspiration hits me so I have to give it a go. This idea hit me a few hours ago so I had to play around with it. Do you suppose Liane says things like this to Cartman? "Oh, I wish you'd be more like this and less like that!" This poem is entertaining the idea that she does. It saddened me to write it. Why did I write it? Oh, well. It's out of my system now anyway, so I can relax. In other news, rhyming is hard.
Thank you for reading this, and I hope you liked doing so as much as I liked writing it.

Disclaimer: South Park does not belong to me, but to its creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone.