Why is the concept of being forgotten so paralyzingly terrifying to me?
Before the expanse of time,
none of us stand a chance of being remembered.
We will be swallowed up,
only be known as a statistic, a point of reference.
The thoughts we think are paramount
Quail before the laughing face of Time.
God will remember me,
so why do I care about what those on earth think?
Why do I care what people think?
What kind of sick ******* are we that we derive pleasure from others' pain?
Schadenfreude is alive and well
Unlike you and I
Why don't I throw up my hands
And succumb to the ravages of an indifferent Time
And an indifferent society
Why not let them win
Who values a game which is purposely weighted to one side
If not those who have waged something dear upon the outcome
The Ender inside me rejects the faulty system.

Why do I persevere for a "humanity"
which will never improve
In fact,
the more we evolve and know and comprehend,
The more apt we are to be heartless
Because why do we need a heart when we have a brain, Tinman?

Why do we care what we look like
Our bodies are merely
borrowed from the earth
And in the blink of eternity's eye
what we call ours
will belong to another

Why do we live in a world overflowing with bodies
And entirely lacking with people

Why can we satisfy any part of ourselves
by draping on borrowed emotions
Why is the false more alluring than the truth?
Show me an honest person
And I will show you an attractive one.

I am not you
you are not me
And we will never be
The same
Despite the pervading effort of our society
I will not be assimilated.

If we let people in,
They wouldn't hate
So why are we terrified of doing that
Is it because,
If everyone is in,
No one is
And in ceases to exist?

Why do we feel the urge to gloat about things we did not earn

Why does 1
Make more money than 2
Because his nose is straighter,
His hair is curly rather than straight,
Because 1 spends an eighth of his time in the gym
While the less attractive 2 spends 7/8 of his time
Screaming inside
At a society which has cut off its own ears that it can't won't hear.

Why are random genes a judge of worth
While character is a word so overplayed
It folded its hand long ago

Why is the face of a beautiful liar
Infinitely preferable
To that of a plain truthteller
Infinite whys
And a world which whispers
     Cradle me with your honeyed lies
     Assurances of past lullabies
     How do I trust what the mockingbird cries
     When even it runs from the skies
Why do so many see ourselves as bound and controlled by manipulated strings
When those strings are nothing but ropes with which we can escape

Why do we live on top of one another
Without deigning to know our prisonmate
Without so much as a spared thought
For the dead flailing beneath us

Why do I hold dearest to my heart
Past injustices
Counting them as the tiny, insidious proofs
That I am a good person
Because good does not exist without the bad
Relativity is the grip keeping us from sliding
Down.
Away.

Why is it that words spoken can never be taken back?
Simple. We can never reclaim what was never ours.
You think you are original in your menial thoughts
What have you done but regurgitate the thoughts of your predecessors?
Rearranging the same letters
To form the same tiresome conclusions.
We are the worst type of plagiarists.

Why is the only thing propelling you a sense of duty
Why are you devoutly loyal to objects rather than the people who happen to hold them

Why

Why do we invent reasons to hate one another
We take solace in the loopholes which justify our hatred
That we may not be like the "monsters" we condemn

Why are "we" and "they"
Not just markers of distance?
Why must they be very real, ubiquitous mentalities?

Why are somber topics the common stuff of jokes
Because we have grown numb enough to empathy
To shun it in favour of a laugh?

Why is suffering so prevalent
When we have an excess of affluence
Are such extremes what define us as a race?

Why is a white lamb the symbol of pristine innocence
When innocence is slaughtered day after day?
Why are sharks abhorred creatures even though
Our vicious attacks
Far outnumber theirs
Do we idealize them that we may have a reason
An excuse
To assert our dominance over yet one more
To feel the joy of crushing them underfoot
Why do we focus on certain images
When the true image of our society
Is the person who occurs each day,
Who breaks
The answer is because we know
that we
Are at fault.

Why when confronted about the tiniest aspect of ourselves
We rear our heads in defense
Backing up against the corner of idiocy
The walls built upon the truths we have fabricated
Why are the swirling armor of falsities so comforting
And when pierced
We rebel
With every bit of the person we have built
Lashing out as does a dog chained its entire life
But even a dog
Which is after all "just an animal"
*Is not fool enough to delude itself into loving its chain.

Retro-
Spection*
Impossible without the distance of time.
Distance which remembers naught but numbers.
Time cannot help but to dehumanize.
And who are we,
Flecks of dust,
To challenge it?

The lame dog
Paws ****** from the gore of the trail
Ceases
Keeling over
Ragged breaths chopping up the frozen air
And whines mournfully
At the wolves who have already disappeared
Without a glance back.

she
a tired vehicle driven by career
feels as though every second wasted will ruin her
                                                             ­                                                                 ­                                        *he
                  ­                                                                 ­                                has found in his golden heart: *love
                                                          ­                                                                s­he won't let him bathe her in it
                                                              ­          
                                                      ­         they just haven't got the *time

The world covers its ears to the song of the caged bird
Secrets fall upon deafened ears
Finally
It stopped singing

the type of girl who died in a car crash
because she never outgrew going out of her way to go through puddles
the girl who'd always heard she was pretty when she was angry
so she stayed enraged all the time
(there is enough to be angry about)
the girl who always walked like her feet were on fire and she is walking on a tightrope
she saw people she instinctively loved and crossed the street to deliver a compliment

hurry, little birdy! you have to fly away from here*
the girl urgently whispered to the sparrow
but she was too beautiful and the sparrow wanted only her company
the girl cried and urged it to flee
she contorted her face into a scary mask
and made threatening motions
but it would not leave her
and then
the inevitable gunshot
and the girl and her beloved sparrow died

I am frozen
I always have been
Just think with me for a moment
Every moment of every day is so very lucid
I wouldn't imagine I will ever forget the whirlwind inside of me
And yet,
I am empty
I will forget soon
Even this morning is a comparative blur
A few minutes ago
I am a puppet of Time
How can I expect to be remembered *if I have forgotten myself?
I have forgotten myself
*I am as good as dead

sonder

n. the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.

Don't you realize*
The label *"cutter" hurts more than the razor
When you sum all of me, him, her, them in one word
It's as though whips of ice squeeze
Insisting you fit in the confines of that label
And I know
It's hard when that's all we know
Everything is labeled so we understand, but I still hate it
I ask you
What did he look like?
black, brown hair, glasses
If he were a white man, you'd describe his eyes and hair before you'd think of mentioning race
It's not your fault (only)
We name the different to get it under our grasp
A snug bottle in which we can keep the errant genie
But even the words I love are just labels

You made me the sweetest bird of paper
Written on it were lovely memories
Of times when you and I didn't feel so alone
We mistook that time for happiness,
For love.
I took it and as it nestled into my palms,
palms which had felt every bit of your skin
As I thought of hot nights and cool lies,
And the moment you realize
Love had long since become a nighttime activity,
The bird caught on fire in my hands
But didn't burn my red palms

(we didn't know it was a phoenix)

stars* crisscrossed paths to destruction
for the observant
                                                                   the body of Hu m a n i t y
                                                                     and millions of glittering stars
destined to rot in the tomb of Time

Each galaxy is home to someone, each star the sun of someone
Flowers cannot see their own beauty and heat rises
So all they feel is cold, cold
Dust is the bits of ourselves which gave up first
And is the sheen of mortality over all
Time gets time off when we close our eyes
And if we all did at once, it wouldn't have to exist
Petals are as fateful as coins in tender hands
But not near as faithful
And onions sweat tears
As their layers are laid bare

The knives were an inviting buffet of loathing
Their mirrored edges filing away at her inhibition
Until with a savage yell of fear
She picked each instrument up
stabbing and stabbing
Forming a heart of knives, heart of pain, in the wooden countertop

I was crystalline, a lacelike floe of ice
And you in your inferno-storm melted me
But we both know what comes next
Evaporation will be the death of you and I

She no longer remembered how their numbered calendar worked
And in her darkness measured time by hairs lost
She engraved crucial thoughts into her skin
But by the end of the night they no longer made sense
She was eyeless- not sightless- and they ran from her
But she'd played their games long enough

The moment when time coalesces
When every futile aspiration succumbs
And fragility becomes the armour of the arrogant
When scars are beautiful without a lens
And angels are able to stop crying themselves to sleep

Her feet were filed shards of glass
tip-toeing across a beach of RETURN TO SENDER letters
Each puncture a stab in the hearts of the loveless
Her eyes of palest nothing loved
Loved without reason or name or words to explain
But on this beach without
Played the children of failed abortions
Opened doors revealing only mirrors

She knew without a why
That the end had surrendered to shuddering consequence long ago
Light carried upon fragile wind
Devastates the civilization of paper
The elements play cards
With flushes of human hearts
A baby crawling across a desert
Can name the nature of contentment,
Hunger an embarrassing ugliness
Yet her biting world told her she was wrong
In the singular way of maturity

the moment
we fell in love
was like the moment when the darkness rushes to your eyes
after midnight goodbyes

the birds sing songs of sweet agony
begging, crying
for the end of expectations
end of the madness
the intolerable weight
they bartered with hell for flight,
air the illusion of weightlessness,
wings in exchange for terrible visions
laments cursed to sound like shallow song
they too are mute here

The "i"'s of this keyboard know me better than the eyes of anyone I know
This aloof computer has seen me ***** ugly thoughts while "in real life" I don't bat an eye
I am a wounded owl in the night
fearing- free of reason- the sudden dawn
You might be able to help me, but the scars reappear when you leave,
the only magic trick I believe in anymore
(knowledge spoils and sweetens)
don't pity me when I say I can never be loved
You only love one shell of many