We are woven in
                     different cloths
that fit us all.

For we all wear the same
       skin individually.

I stand amongst a crowd of strangers
Each feeling their identity is in danger
Laughing loudly but only when you do too
So many things that I want to do
But only if you do them too
I try to recoup my eccentricity yet it stays unaided
Every gesture well calculated
Never questioned never debated
Lacking what once was mine and only mine
Today I stand jaded, lost to time
Comforting myself by calling it all a part of the design

I stand amongst a crowd of strangers
Each woman wanting to change her
Widening waist size engulfing my poise
And my mind losing control over those petty boys
I’m told to love myself and rejoice
OH!  What a marvel is this thing called me
Yet I think of me as a fruit of some poisonous tree
It’s like a flea stuck on me
Funny how my arch nemesis
Is me, and how my inhibition’s genesis
Was me, yet I couldn’t keep it off my premises


I stand amongst a crowd of strangers
I call them my friends and my neighbors
We stay together and laugh each day
But in between all the laughs our thoughts run astray
Going places and times I prefer not to say
We stay so entwined in our thoughts, so confined
that how unnatural it is to find
It’s not just me who loses her mind
And yet every day I meet, sit and greet
Hoping one day someone understands my need
My need for the same two hands, same two feet.

Those who make me smile
Wish they could stay for awhile
Through the storm of life
But the smiles fade
The truth is revealed
Standing alone
Left to pick up the pieces
Abandoned to fight for myself
A cycle
Repeating
More lies, more desertion
Unaccompanied during the real battle

This stagnant pond refuses to change
It won't even acknowledge the rain
Painting itself as full of lush life
Whilst ignoring the constant strife

"I am my own system" it cries
"I won't care when the river dries"
Forgetting, of course, it's own role
In making the water continually flow

In this age of inflated identity
It's lost the collective amenity
Standing alone amongst the crowd
Singular voices don't ring so loud

This stagnant pond refuses to accept
That the way it acts is incorrect
"It's not me it's them" it blames
Losing the help that it shames

One day this pond will dry up
Leaving little left in the muck
Whereas other ponds form a lake
Giving for the collective's sake

A new beginning,
A comparable ending
It is the same poem
I keep writing.

The message differs
The titles adjust
One more figure of speech
For picking up a broken piece.

Elusive alterations
Editing the outcome
A plethora of versions
For my book of poems.

Another round,
Back to square one
Are there any words left
This heart has not said.

I think that I might've been wrong this whole time
and that all my life's been an endless road of false imagery
about myself and the ones surrounding me.

Everyone's sayin' these days:
"just do your thing!"
"be more egotistic!"
"risk it!"
"live a little!"
"give less ***** about what others think!"
"you're on your own!"
"don't get involved in other's lives, as they don't get involved in yours"
and I seem more and more confused,
not getting any of the words they're sayin';
feeling silly all of a sudden...
like I imagine some people in those pictures
or videos where they put a black box over someone's eyes.

I feel like I've been livin' as a small,
odorless flower in a big garden,
all a long waiting for the right gardener
to thin out the seedlings around me and now
I've ended up alone in the most beautiful vase,
in the house of the most gifted perfume creator,
that normally feels every bird ****,
but now feels nothing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zGRQsYZE7U

Don't be like anyone else,
you will just become a cacophony of bad habits.
Don't be like anyone else,
not when you can be yourself,
be perfectly different,
your own habits will become a signature of individuality,
where it like badge,
be proud
be brave
be different.
Don't be like anyone else,
just be you.

Totally terrified
Of ending up
Exactly
Like everybody
Else is

Behind the floating point
we, the other digits,
mere fading ripples,
undulate until
we drown into oblivion