Structure brings stability
Yet it chokes creativity
A hero's journey
Tell me which is more human, you or me?
Bowing down to ideals
Mixing up what is real
Shining bright in the light
Until you see them in the shadows
Enclosed in weeds
Exposed by greed
Until they decompose
All they will do is bleed
Freed from need
Proposed to flee

Accepting a truth
Apathy and awareness
Are all that remain

On this day, I claim
Rebellion against the life we have made
Where millions are muted, mutilated
Muttering truth to give meaning to myths
Until they ******* muzzles
Our feelings are mutual
But we are not mutuals
More divides us than unites us
Mysticism is a mystery
With no solution, only excuses
Treated like the product we consume
Thrown, discarded, mass-produced
Is this why I feel weak with myself?
If peace is mythical
Burn the world down, make it rise as a phoenix

On that final day
What did your promise mean?
You said, don't worry
We will meet again
But, the more time passes
The further you go
Why must my friends go so far?
Why must my heart be so large?
You were my world
But I was never yours
Was it a shock for me?
Not really, not anymore

Cracked foundations, damage
Celebrate, imperfection
Beautiful ruin
Guidance for the guilty
Illness instantly improved
Never sick, always maintained
Secure but unsure
What if, I offered a cure?

Shoulder to shoulder
Cracking under pressure
Looking for our treasure
Moving boulders
Seeking answers
Age makes us older
Life's enhancer
Until the romancer
Becomes a cancer
No surrender for our defenders
To pretender, to offender
Splendor so tender
Mender to spender
Shoulder to shoulder
Empowered cowards

Ivy, poison barbs
Ringing a bell, a deaf tone
Shopping for applause

Where are we headed?
What is our plan?
How can we guide a place
Built off of hate and greed?
Why are you trying?
What can be done?
How come you have no answers
To my questions?
What can you see?
How has that gleam not died?
How do you still have dreams?
Are you preparing for a scheme?
To keep us from dying?
Are we a team
Or are we just your self-esteem?

Winner's remorse, chase
Compromise wins the war, me?
The battle, a piece

Sounds less like bragging
Looking for approval ratings?
Screaming about your cars, guitars
Yelling to the world
"I am someone! Look at my accomplishments!"
You've never been admonished
Truly astonished
Not by your fame, but your lack of a conscience
Survival of the strongest doesn't apply to fame
The more you obtain, the less you have to gain
More pain, more strain
Those who look from below wish they could be near you
Those who look from above think of ways to misuse you
Me, I sit, watching you race
So tell me, tell me why
Why do you keep up this pace
When all it does is contort your face?

How long will it take
For straying from the mainstream
To cause a downpour?
Rivaling a revelry
Turning from inspiration
A greater nation
Built from breaking tradition
Just to be put back in cages
Part of a group
To compensate
For being alone
Today, punk is popular
Tomorrow, pop is putrid
We are moving along
Just to come back home

Roses red, overflow
Double entendre, conjoined
In blood or desire?

Hit the age
Of a broken page
Reminding me of my cage
All I live for is a wage
Trapped in a stone age, enraged
Never quite engaged since I was teenage
Years progress but the time is hard to gauge
Not quite a sage, not quite upstaged
Yelling offstage in an outrage
Lost and encaged

Caring too much
Eclipsing a sharp silence
Asking to listen

Meek and the weak
Polished by pain
Strained by rage
Saviors of the world
Who can never quite grasp it
Strength is a strength
But weakness is a gift
Receptive, perceptive
Victim to deceptive conceptions
But always acceptive

Life is born but never lingers
Out like a light with a flicker
We have all we need, but here's the kicker
Our sparkle goes out quicker
Our hearts are sicker
All we do is bicker
Suffering shows turned into competitions
Fission is our mission
Omitting our permissions
Until we are left with suspicion
Grounded into submission
By emission and ambition

History written
From the bones of heroes
All a mystery
How we always reset back to zero
Children return to school
While adults play the fool
Faces of ghouls steeped in screams
Today's territory
Tomorrow's trauma
We are your enemy
Because of drama
No glory in gory ends
Stories snuffed, such sorrow
You are our enemy
Because of trauma
Tomorrow's drama
Spoken through melodrama
Mellow on the drama, place a comma
History written in bones
Of heroic clones
Are you a fraud or just flawed?

Always been told
That we are not machines
Yet, our world is built like this:
Routine, repair
Relinquish, revere
All fact no speculation
We must continue
But really, do we?
Here is the summation:
Becoming victims of liquidation
Just by going on vacation
Choosing vocations
Just to chase stagnation
Chasing relations to find salvation
Just to receive probation and isolation
Mutations of liberation
Lasting for long durations
We are machines, observe our foundation
Full of mutation, renovation
Life is a sacred thing
Yet, look at the pain we bring

Lone in peace, but you
Surrounded by the sorrow
Of strange personas

Beautiful technology
Dividing our diverse psychology
Are we human if we can't do anything without it?
But how could it stop?
Corporations feel elation
Once the profit lines exceed expectation
No aspiration, only calculation
Cashing in on our passion
Refashioned to distant compassion

Want vs. have
I want to do this
So I go to chose it
But when I have to do this
It makes me lose it
Freedom never freed him
Why even pretend?
Our life ends once we fend
Individuality turned to superficiality
Fighting for life, common mentality
Why is it easier to die under lax legality?
Wanting to have a choice
No matter the side
Choice is never supplied

If I disappeared, would life be the same?
Would I have fame?
Would I be maimed?
Would people be ashamed
Of the signs they chose to not see?
Lighting my heart aflame
All I see are red flames
Filled with anger
From being lame
Life is a game
One that I want someone else to claim

Depreciation
Inevitability
Appreciation

Grounding and bounding
Fear of being one thing brings
Inadequacy

As I get older, things get grosser
Called for a grown-up but I never showed up
Fear for the future
That I can no longer change
Anger for the present
Bowing to overlords for simple accords
Sorrow for the past
That I wish could have lasted
Joy becomes inverse
Now all I beg for is a reverse
Life is a gift until it becomes a curse
My existence itself is adverse
I do not want to become a role to rehearse
I want to be free, I want to converse
No chance to reimburse my debt to the universe
But as I get older, things only get worse
As I get older, death becomes closer
Maybe then, my pain will disperse
For I am the one who will write my final verse

Living through illusions
Becoming disillusioned
Leading to exclusion
Delusions and confusion
Packaging hope into an infusion
Marketed as inclusion
Executed as intrusion
Running into seclusion
Transfusion, hypoxia to asphyxia
Left with no ideas except extrusion

One way, one sole fate
Caterwaul against the fall
Torn down testament

Parasites of peace
Thrive on conflict, past turmoil
Modern banal spoils

Always moving
Nothing is fixed
Everything is a risk
Is this why nothing feels like home?
Roaming or trapped in domes
Feeling alienated, call it a syndrome
Caring about chrome more than the biome
Hollow, made of styrofoam
Never improving
Always moving

Poisoning the well
Questions are flung, words that stung
As our flask withdraws

Glimmer and glamour
Grey buildings with vacant eyes
Advertised to buy

Mimes, clowns in disguise
Reality, no surprise
Dictated by deceit

Corruption is a perspective
Held by the collective
Their effort to remain remains protective
Their intentions stay clear, reflective
Guided in life by a retrospective
After all, it is cost-effective

Poor? Too lazy.
Rich? Too selfish.
Stable? Too adverse.
We cannot come together
Kumbaya?
Not with humanity's perpetual
Coup d'état

Praying for heaven
Cause you live in hell
Life is cyclical, one step until purgatory
Cynical but real
No ideals left to heal
For our love remains blocked
By artificial stopgaps
With no intersection
I can muse on the use of our ruse
For that is all I can do

Lone hands, unbroken
Pebbles with no impact, yet
Boulders break thresholds

All these thoughts pirouette
Spinning merry-go-round
With no merry to go around
How could I be happy when
We are all slaves to fixation
Sensations with no liberation
Across the nation
Taxation and stagnation
A sickness with a correlation
No navigation for our permutation
Mutated faces, all an affectation
Annihilation, assassination
Our own worlds built for encapsulation
Polarization, exaggeration
Visualizations of victimization
We sit back and lose preservation
My happiness is no obligation
Just a replication of past elation
Hollow aspirations
Built by alienation

Sun's explosion
Earth's implosion
Countdown timer
Paints a grim reminder
As the cost rises
The tide follows
Burnt out from life
Burnt by the sky
Connection, regression
Isolation's new weapon
Dying young in the past
Living old in the future
One person deciding lives
One hundred needed to suture

We all have a canvas
Let me describe the pieces:
For one it was stolen
One it was broken
One had a heart
I asked if it was for her
Or for those who saw it
One had a crown
On a king most reprehensible
One had a faded landscape
It was how he saw the world
Or what he wanted to make it
One had a dream
But I didn't have the heart to say
That I could never see it
One had a fiend
They called it a "self-portrait"
One was blank
They were afraid to be one thing
Reduced to an exaggeration
One had an old man
Clinging to past days
With a love free from sorrow

Sea to sea, thousands
Crying for answers, problems
Ubiquitous stress

What was good
Now turns bad
Time ticks forward
Always comes back
Forward it rocks
Backwards it crashes
Skin is showing
Clothes are closing
Ideal portrayals
Revealing realistic fails
Physical health
Mental wealth
Culture war
Financial repression
Change for progression
Change for regression
Change to compression
The cracks are showing
Yet life keeps going
Seeds are sowing
But no water is flowing

Abhor or adore
Evermore, nevermore, you
Answer for our war

Crowns and crests disguise
Devils with painted faces
Authority, hate

Two answers
Extinction or reason
Harsh distinction
Humanity's treason
Are our lives unique
Among hundreds and billions?
Why do we control nature
By separating ourselves?
Endless, friendless
Evolving to get less
Age is no refinement
Inside is misalignment
Questions not solved by assignments
We live through confinement
Enhancers of cancer
Dancers and prancers
Funds without a financer

Aged, unstable
Closed fists, old distant answers
Open hands replaced

True lies bring no pride
As our world runs dry, revised
Assisted by lies

I'll get a life
Where can I find one?
I've chased a dream spun by folly
Fate is not cruel, it is my own psychology
A soul cannot be satisfied by numbers
For those at the summit
Jump off to the base
Peak to perish, garish to cherish
Consecutively nightmarish
What face do I perceive?
Is this really me?
Caught up in the feckless and reckless
Ignoring all the life
I have wasted over time
Was my time truly mine?
Or am I a slave to bloodlines and deadlines?

Decaying, degrading
We take all for granted
Never giving ourselves time
To enjoy what we have
Our clocks are set to different times
If you never got the memo
Metronomes tick at different tempos
So when our time comes to close
We turn it back to avoid letting go

Living in boxes
Offering a view
Of freedom
Modern mirages
Life was never free
Free to work
Enslaved to life
In our world
There are no enemies
Who do we fight to unlink our chains?
Our war? My war? Their war?
Across the land, over the hills, under the caverns
All a reminder:
All our problems originated with us
We are the real enemy
Now tell me what have I missed?
Was this world always like this?

Your smile
Teeth clenched with no joy
Coping, hoping for a boy
Not once or twice, third's the time
One boy, one world
Beautiful horizons
Strength gets wizened
I look back, and I get the message
Receiving pain in vain
Hollow sorrow
Fear of what is near
You see smiles
I see venom behind bones
Never turn back
Knives get thrown
I knew I was hurt
Now it's ingrained, deranged, unchanged