Oceanic wastelands and barren lagoons.
Twisted tails of eons ago.
Malformed by bitter tongues
of jealous sea creatures,
who envy the oyster.

I am not a metal man
I am no metal machine
which you can turn off and on,
use for your own devices.

I am real.
I am blood and flesh,
love and sadness.
I am arteries and muscle,
thought and sound.

I am salty tears and wounds,
cut newly each day.
I am bone and brow,
sweat and smell.

I have no cold metallic heart,
that cannot feel
the love of another.
I have pain and
happiness in my chest.

I have the motion of
everything around me,
the wind against my face,
sand in between my toes.

I do not compute,
or follow a set of codes,
that limit my existence and
subject my being.

I am fear and sin,
that may live as I please.
I will not be molded and
bent with the push of a button,
or the pull of a lever by
the man above me.

I am whole and being.
Breath fills my lungs.
Food fills my stomach,
thoughts and memories
fill my head.

Lust fills my lips and *****,
sorrowful aching fills my heart.
Blood fills my veins,
marrow fills my bones.

I am no metal man.
I feel the pain of
every single being around me.
I am the pain, I cause it.
I weep and howl because of it.

Shells hit the floor as quickly as
droplets of blood fall.
As quickly as a mother falls to her knees
before the sight of her dead son.

I am the trigger finger,
that contains madness and fear.
I am a lost soul that
wanders the world.

I am contradiction;
life and death.
Everything that is the emptiness
that dwells in the chest
of every human.
I am no metal man.
I am you.

I follow my conscious mind
into the vast unknown.
Down the creaky, wooden steps,
I enter darkness.

The cellar door latches behind me,
throwing me further into the abyss.
I walk, running my hand against the wall.
The cool, damp cement calms my fear.

As I pursue the nothing,
the air grows thick and musty
like topsoil and fresh rain.
Visions of April downpours
cloud my thoughts.

One by one, I carefully step.
Testing the hard floor with each forward venture,
waiting for it to cease in its existence
and for me to slip further into the puzzle.

The perpetual blackness ushers me on,
until splinters of groaning wood meet my hand.
Groping my way up a new staircase,
I embark into what is hopefully
light.

Sitting on purple dinosaurs
has never interested me.
That is until today,
when sat I upon one and
wondered what they eat.
Who knows?
I learned my brother also enjoys the
company of brightly colored, plastic reptiles.
He is living two hundred miles away,
maybe more; maybe less.
Yet I felt the bond strengthen between us,
bringing us closer together.
Between a gap of 378 days
and 200 miles,
I like to think he felt it too.
Perhaps he did.
Who knows?

Who knows anything?
Who knows what purple dinosaurs eat or
why moths fly towards the light?
Who knows that I prefer blue slushies to red or
the square root of pi?
Who knows who invented the alphabet or
invents reasons for war?
Who knows how to stop chain smoking or
why we cause guilt for ourselves?
Who knows a sure way to cure hiccups or
how to love without being hurt?

If everyone knew only one thing,
people would still
parade around arrogantly,
as if they themselves know
every single idea
that God has for man.
One may even argue that
God does not exist,
and that he is just a figment
in the imagination of fools.
Once again, I will argue back
Who knows?  I know I don’t.
I’m just a girl
sitting on a purple dinosaur.

She gave me a deformed M&M; and said
“Here.  It’s just like you.”
I took it and ate it, before she could take it back.

I savored every little bit of the blue candy coating and
decided it tasted the same as the rest.
The same as the “normal” ones.

She proceeded to give me a handful of differently colored M&Ms;
and I tasted each one.  They all tasted the same.  The same as
the deformed one.

She then gave me a broken and cracked M&M; and said
 “Here.  Just like you.”
I nodded and smiled as I once again took the candy,
knowing that this one would taste the same as the others.

Upon thinking more about these strange, chocolate candies
I remembered the M&Ms; that rested in a glass jar
atop my grandpa’s kitchen fridge.

They were the same as the deformed, broken, and regular ones now, yet
whenever he snuck us a small handful of those little, chocolate candies
they tasted better.  Special.
If only his hands could reach down from heaven now.