We’re all slaves
To a fluorescent screen
Forgetting to search
For our personal being

Accepting stillness
Embracing a mold
Forever doing
What we’ve always been told

Nothing is new
Repeating the past
Creating things
That’ll never last

So we sit and stare
Blank as can be
No longer looking
For what we can't see

Hurt me once
Hurt me twice
Leave a scar
Haunt my life

See me fall
See me break
Laugh at what
I cannot take

Make me love and
Grant my wish
Seal it all
With a painful kiss

Emotionally torn
Exhausted, abused
A hazy fog
Perpetually confused

Gone right now
Gone for good
Life played out
The way it should

Yet still you lurk
And steal my breath
Our unknown thoughts
An inevitable death

People will try to brain wash you
  They pelt their ideas,
    Throw their beliefs in every direction
      Hoping that one of their bullets will stick.
    People want you on their team.
  Any idea or belief opposing theirs?
Well that’s downright disgusting.

  Convert to this side,
    Sway to that
      Sometimes it’s fiction
    People forget about the fact.
  What happened to individuality?
The choice of right or wrong?
  It’s beginning to be so hard to see
    Where one fits amoung the throng.
      You begin to shift your own ideals
    You begin to change your side
  Simply to blend in with the crowd
It’s just another way to hide.
  You hide behind that thick façade
    Always worn for show
      You’re melting inside little by little.
    You’ll be nothing before you know.

It's as if time
    Becomes a wisp
  Of vapor.
It leaks from my memory
  And distorts my concept
    Of concept itself.

      Floating through a place
    Filled with clouds of
  Creamy crystals
Being grasped by their
  Seductive claws,
    Tantalizingly slow,
      A shudder.

I’ve got this insistent need
To constantly feed
That hungry emotion
Inside of me
I can’t seem to stave
The things I crave
I’m feeling alone
And I need to save
Me from myself
Cause I’m trapped inside
My mind and my heart  
Simply won’t subside
So here I sit
Just like a clone
But in the end
It’s me alone.

Go ahead and look in the mirror.
Stare at the stranger till the image is blurred
Everyone around you, well they’re superior
So you drink past the pain till words become slurred.

Please, pray tell me, what exactly is beauty?
Is it simply an outfit we wear?
The color of our eyes, skin?
A glint of something special,
Something to make them stare, grin?

Beauty is a figment.
Beauty is a fallacy.
Beauty is in our mind.
Beauty will die, and so will we.

It’ll erode with time.
Turn into a slick, thick slime.
After you’ve hit your prime?
You’re done.
You’re garbage.
You’re finished, gone.
It’s a fact of life, now it’s time to move on.

This life we’re in, a selfish game we play
The cards we’re dealt, a hand that can’t fold
We’ll shift through scenery seeing a vast array
Of truths and lies that’ll always be told.

We hold onto beauty.
We treasure it.
We put it on a pedestal.
It is the God we adore,
The saint we praise,
The prayer we recite.
“If I’m this pretty, well…
At least I did something right”

We base self worth on looks.
The pool we bask in is shallow.
So easy to touch the bottom.
Vapid, almost worthless thoughts
Float along;
Skimming the surface
Where they seem to belong.

Scratch past that surface and what do you find?
Maybe a small girl, cowering with fear.
She makes herself perfect so the whole world is blind,
It’s her established façade that she holds so near

Near to her heart,
Near to her soul
She’s lost then she’s found
She’s so good at her role

Her role of the perfect,
Her role of the light,
Her role of the worthless
Her role with no fight.

She’s trapped in her box,
She’s chained to her arm
It’s a weight she can’t bear,
Only one to cause harm.

But go ahead, run away,
Run as FAST as you can.
We won’t catch you because you’re a worthless man.
That’s how you see yourself, so that’s who you are
When you’re sprinting away, you won’t get very far.

You’ll trip on your own,
You’ll fall over your feet.
Stumbling, tumbling
It’s you you’ve just beat.

Learn from this now,
Try to HEAR what I say.
Beauty’s the cruelest
Game that we play.

Hand me a razor and I will hack away at myself,
Until it's not me that's left,
But another faceless, vulnerable canvas
And I will leave the skins I have shed lying in my wake,
All for the sake of acceptance.

I give you my autonomy,  and in return you bombard me with images,
All of the same, dull, blank piece of moulding clay.

"Muscle is weight and weight is fat, lose it" and I try,
Holding desperately to the pieces me I have left.
And she tries harder still,  and her health drains from her blood, until you tell her she has gone too far: "this is not beautiful"
And with that, you shatter her world: you taught her that's all there is to care about.

Show me a picture I ask of you,
and you show me a porcelain statue
"Bone is heavy and hard to touch. Where have the curves gone?"
And so she looks down at her body,  shrinking in to herself,  ashamed of who she was born.

Play me a song, I ask again,
But you show me yet more bodies.
More faceless aspirations you know I can't reach.
"Conform, conform, conform" you order,  and I do.
You pull from my tight clasp the last few parts I have of myself,
Remove all with which I was brought into your world,  and you show me a doll.

You cut, stick, sew and glue until she is no longer real. You cover her imperfections with paint until she is no longer recognisable.
You dress her in clothes too tight to be comfortable, in shoes too impractical to walk,
and then you throw her into the lion's den,
As she has to fight her way out much harder than any of you were made to.
You make her fight until her soul has left, and she will never be the person her mother made.
You tell me that this is adulthood, that she is a woman,
But you have taken the human out of her, and you have kept her corpse as a trophy.

This is a man's world, but I will not back down.