There is a lack of character in the normality she forces on the world
Yet she is an oddity
Her smile longs for approval
But her eyes plead for acceptance
Her hair blends with a crowd
She is a drop of water in the ocean
She swears contentment to the world
But whispers something else
In the ears of those who truly listen, she lets out a faint request
She feels like a misfit but looks like a beauty
She conforms, but she is no phony
She screams a secret
A shame no one knows
A shame of who she really is and how she really feels
A drop of rain is the first sign of an entire storm,
as is a tear.
Person-a human being regarded as an individual
An individual,
we’re human beings sure
but no,
not individual.
We walk around like cattle
We see the clothes that our peers wear and imitate
We see an image in our head of who we want to be,
but that isn’t us…
that vision dancing in our heads is someone else
someone we admire
Someone we aspire to be
Someone,
a human being,
but not a person.
Wouldn’t it be easier if we were all just figures,
all the same shape, size, color, gender,
no prejudice,
no beauty,
just mind and spirit
Or is that even less individual?
What’s different between a herd of girls wearing the same clothes
smiling at the same boys
than a group of figures all created identical
No flaws, no beauty
Is there a difference?
Perhaps an inevitable conformity, is greater than a purposeful alikeness
Maybe,
This inevitable conformity,
is an agreement for world peace and understanding
The world sometimes sucks.
The world sometimes sucks. When a big man makes a decision that costs the little man’s life, when being poor seems illegal, when the lottery drew your name, when a man is not a man because of his color, these are the moments in life when all hope and faith and respect can be lost, and these are the times when all that is needed is a distraction.
Charles Bukowski once wrote of a time when Glenn Miller poured out of the jukebox. In Bukowski’s poem “Glenn Miller”, while the rest of the world runs off to war, the narrator sits at a malt shop watching America’s youth dance. Young girls are dancing with football lads and college students, the waiters serving exactly what was needed, a distraction. This poem speaks of the rush to war in comparison to the contentedness of his laziness. “That last bright sunshine, we warmed ourselves in it shutting away everything else while the universe opened its mouth in an attempt to swallow us all.” Bukowski’s poem forced a new found understanding of people upon me as well as a new consideration of different perspectives.
I am getting to an age where I gain an understanding of people and politics, an understanding I’m not sure I want. This poem sets up two sides to the story: what is happening, and what you choose to know, believe in, or focus on. This power, this ability to live in the moment, is an idea totally unreachable to me, and in this time, this ability was a necessity. There was the inevitable day to come, but there was also the inevitable song to play next. Which future do you focus on? Two months or two minutes? The road to danger is an oblivious one. Giving your mind, body, and soul one night of total carelessness, one night with no tomorrow, gave America’s youth a chance to remember their innocence and gave them a casual yet spectacular, a regular but in no way regular, night to remember as they declare their representation for our country.
“As the world rushed to war, as Hitler speechified, the girls whirled gracefully.” Another topic hiding behind the words of this poem is the comparison of perspective, big picture to little picture. At this time the world as a whole is panicking, frantic, rushing to war, yet the girls are smiling, taunting the gentlemen, dancing the night away at a small malt shop across the street. Across the waters, Hitler takes over innocent minds minute by minute, while on our side of the shores our innocents make their own, minor, history. On days when large things occur on the news and our world as a whole is weeping, I may, as my own person, make a memory worth a lifetime, a memory meaningful only to me. The world will not know, but my world will.
My mind is home to a monster.
Caged and weighed down, hidden under a lifetime of social norms and expectations.
Sometimes it squirms loose, just enough to be heard in my tone of voice or seen in the light of my eyes.
It has never gotten out;
I am not sure what would happen if it did.
It whispers to me, when everything is quiet enough for me to hear it.
I listen, but I never trust it,
Instead… I tame it and feed it distractions and affirmations.
