#conformity
As people, we bend and we break,
more often than not for the sake
of another.
There’s a reason why bending comes
first,
like the river trailing down to the lake
on a late
summer
night.
The same path winding,
splitting,
running,
flowing,
rushing
in the other direction.
Bending; it bends, twists and curves
all the way.
From one side of the planet
to the other;
break of day.
And I thought lighthouses were
made to stop ships from
sinking.
But the stars and moon are
blinding me
and I can’t see a single thing.
So I just keep on drowning,
drowning,
drowning
in a polluted sea.
The lingering ash and dust
on my fingertips is washed
away by the water.
Yet when I try to resurface,
all I smell and see,
is copper.
Don’t paint my body
with the same shade of black
that everyone else has.
I know it’ll get washed away
by the current.
But I still feel it,
stuck to the strands of my hair
and covering my back.
I’ve studied all these maps
from people who’ve studied water bodies:
how they form,
how they stay,
how they deform,
how they carry
the force of the wind
and the load of a ship;
the ferocity of the beast,
feral as I can be within.
Rippling waves of murky water still reflect
the image of my face.
So at least,
all this bending and breaking
hasn’t gone to waste.
May 12
May 12, 2026 at 7:46 AM UTC
What does it mean to be a person?
Normal and unforgiving,
standing by a faulty saying,
looking for reprieve.
Can the television glow
on its own,
or only when you turn it on?
Must it be given prompting,
must I be given prompting
to find the truth behind it all?
Sometimes the power switch is off
but the electrical appliances still run.
Is that a sign of brokenness?
Is that a sign?
What does it mean
to be normal?
What does it mean
to be abiding?
What does it mean
to conform
to the likings of society?
What does it mean to act
and
look the same as everyone else?
What does it mean to act
and
look like yourself?
If the mirror is so cursed,
if the windows are all curtained,
if the light is an all-consuming void
then why do they feel
beckoned towards it?
May 9
May 9, 2026 at 1:03 AM UTC
Yes. No one controls anything.
Why would they?
" Move at the speed the system demands . "
Work sheets, home work , dead lines.
Manufactured scarcity from desk to cubicle.
Manufacturing fear. “ School spirit” + Nationalism = War.
Manufactured urgency. Now, now now.
Go, Dog Go !
Another news cycle you’ll never be a part of
unless you break in a way they don't allow .
Sunday Schools most important lesson , sit down.
Shut up. Do as you’re told .
Nobody cares about your f---- ing opinion.
Get back in line.
‘Bringing in the sheep’,
indeed .
You ever see how they pack them, the little baby chicks?
That’s the whole plan right there , plain as day.
No space. No air. Just bodies pressed in until ‘survival “
can only become friction. Chicken friction = slaves in white collars.
No one teaches standards or dignity. ( not for free )
Stack them , Fred Trump higher.
Call it pre- sorted corporate efficiency.
Synchronicity. Ask anybody who's ever had a fast food job
where they couldn't keep up.
Can’t obey? Try to make it on the street with no EBT.
To noisy ? Won’t “ calm down, sir !”
Oh, You’re gonna love the stripes in the next place...
Concrete. Steel cages. ‘ Moves’ smaller than the meal trays.
Another unwanted pregnancy crammed into your cell every other day. Eugenics plan B.
And you think THAT’S the bottom?
Not even close. Get back in line before they strap you down.
Electro shock and needle showers till you... still .
More forced injections. The vaccine label slips off the BIG OIL mercury
as they Pump you full of whatever keeps you quiet. Gives you autism, Cancer. " it's genetic " = your fault...
In the Loony bin there’s little , movement.
No sky. No choice. the more clearly realized baby chicken tray.
Not even allowed to check out early.
A fate worse than hell, with no death just existing.
On their terms.
At the speed the system demands.
And still somewhere up above it all,
another Fred Trump hands it off to another little baby Donny,
born outside the chickadee packed trays.
Now it's HIS job to tell you what freedom looks like.
Tells you 2 % spending on welfare is the problem.
" Hate the brown skins." " very fine people on both sides."
Tells you less will somehow become more as you wait for it to
" Trickle down". Let your ' Pep Rally' daughters twerk as they lust
for them... anything to try and escape the tray
Smile and vote red , As they cut , Meals on Wheels.
Grade school Breakfast AND lunch programs,
music, art, GONE never to return,
not just starving your children physically,
But creatively and emotionally.
The GOP way .
Hiding behind the " star of David " and Supreme Court bribes.
you say you don't need me or to be told
Old oil Money = power,
then why is it still making choices for you,?
not some random unknowable ghost in the machine.
Policies don’t just appear handcuffed to a briefcase full of
bearer bonds
out of thin air.
Cuts don’t just “ happen “ by Sheeny magic alone.
Somebody’s processed boyscout - suit, signs them.
Somebody ‘s PTA Oprah ****** -slob benefits.
Now HE uses the Marines not just the local cops and the
National Guard to keep the fear
and the jails “ cranked beyond capacity” .
“ why , can’t MY generals be more like Hitlers.” ? ? ?
... born outside the trays… never once cooked never shopped for groceries .. calls THAT freedom.
Tariffs no one wants or deserves as punishment .
For no reason but himself.
Ego.
Says less will SOMEHOW become more.
Less food. Less art. Less music.
Starve the body. Starve the mind.
Starve whatever might have fought back.
The old system doesn’t just break you.
It trains you to break yourself.
Faster. Come on. Faster.
Go, dog. Go.
Talk radio propaganda is your non stop fantasy coach
that always puts you “in”
another beloved by the community constant pedophile
“ INSTRUCTOR” telling your kids “do it faster, baby . Yeah... oh, yeah, just like that, gimme more. One more time , don’t stop now.”
Sports or animal ****** ?
the only outlets you have given or shown them
and you wonder why little Johnny can’t read
as the bodies clog the “ busses only” lane
in front of another school.
slap another NRA sticker on their NFL lunch box.
Another golden little chick waiting to be sorted
stacked on top in trays as the waste falls
used and discarded.
Dr. Suess had it right.
Go, dog.
“Move at the speed the system demands.”
Go !(It's not like they just woke up today and figured out
that paying one guy to put a gun in your back is cheaper than paying us all. Never forget they can't survive without us, and
there's more of us than them.)
Oh, and don’t remember “ Think positive”.
I mean after all ... They are watching.
Apr 4
Apr 4, 2026 at 2:43 PM UTC
They arrive soft,
curved like question marks,
hands clutching wonder,
eyes wide as open windows.
But Society arrives too—
arms heavy with blueprints,
breath reeking with should and must.
"Here," they say,
their voices not unkind,
just certain.
"This is the shape you become."
They point to the rigid mold:
The angles of achievement,
the cold lines of expectation,
the polished surface of conformity.
"Fit," they murmur.
"Fit is safety. Fit is success."
Small hands tremble,
pushing clay not theirs.
Fingers; meant for mud pies and starlight
now scrape against prescribed edges.
Tears fall,
not of sadness first,
but of effort—
of trying to force a circle into a square hole.
The mold is heavy.
It carves away laughter,
flattens curiosity—
demands stillness where wings should beat.
Why?
The unspoken cry hangs in the air,
a fragile bubble.
Why must I be this shape?
You who carved it—
can you even bear its weight yourselves?
The answer is silence—or worse,
a sigh disguised as wisdom:
"It's just how it's done, child."
So the soft clay hardens,
fractured from straining.
The question mark snaps straight.
The open window shutters close.
And Society nods,
admiring the fractured replica.
Another child shaped,
another soul splintered,
another brick laid
in the wall of the
Status Quo—
Mar 27
Mar 27, 2026 at 6:48 AM UTC
An Apis hides her head in a hole to regurgitate nectar,
the sticky ***** pouring from her mouth,
only later to use that same mouth to feed
her young and her queen,
a life sustaining royal jelly.
Perhaps my metaphor is flawed,
for, even our own **** sapien royalty know
they have to face it all alone.
Face what alone?
The Apis is never alone, she has her sisters.
A simple life, though failure to keep her place –
perform her tasks –
results in death.
In death?
Perhaps following is not so simple,
but maintain a hive mind and there is nothing to fear.
Nothing to fear?
Except the possession of a hive mind.
That is the only way to not face it all alone:
be just the same as all the rest.
Act like them?
Yes, darling, but more than that:
You must think like them as well.
Mar 8
Mar 8, 2026 at 5:12 PM UTC
—The Fear of White—
I want to paint
the way I truly wish to paint.
She tests me gently.
“Then why not paint
on a white canvas?”
Her eyes sink deep
into the center of my thoughts—
as if asking
if I’m ready.
“Everyone will see you,
every corner of you,
even the parts
you never wanted to show.
Are you sure
you’re okay with that?”
A chill runs through me.
It’s frightening.
No one would really help me,
not when it matters—
even if many swear
they would.
“Look,” she says,
pointing to a canvas nearby.
I follow her finger.
Gray covers it so heavily
I can’t make out
anything at all.
She continues,
“People say we should protect
those who paint on white.
Yet they stay hidden in gray
themselves.”
I stare at the canvas.
Some must have been forced
into white
without ever wanting to be.
In a world like this,
if you don’t match
the colors around you,
you stand out
too painfully.
I need to protect myself—
the words slip out
before I even realize it,
shaking with fear.
Nov 30, 2025
Nov 30, 2025 at 10:07 AM UTC
Shallow Strings spreaded
out in every spiral direction
in this hungrsystem
Where do I go?
To the strings that were already filled?
Where do I start?
To the strings that were already given?
Where do I live?
To the thoughts that say "i do not know."
Do I replace mu colorful battery
with a gray battery?
The fat spider likes them gray
for sure.
Do I replace my human eyes
with the spider eyes?
The eyes that are filled with illusions, paper, and profits.
Or do I keep my human heart,
still picking up the flies
that the strings "accidentally" drag in?
I do not know,
not in this spiral web
of struggles.
Sep 27, 2025
Sep 27, 2025 at 12:30 PM UTC
I look into the mirror
That’s
Foggy and blurred,
And wrap myself around
The shape
I see in return.
Put a face to name,
And name to face,
Turn my back and suddenly,
That’s
Not
The
Case?
Watching from afar
As another cries,
Helpless to do anything but
Keep it inside
And escape the mess
that’s only mine,
Navigate the maze
Inside their mind.
Holding out a hand I could never take,
slamming on a door that I couldn’t
Break,
But now that you’re
holding out
the key to
me,
One can finally
See—
Past the
mirror
Image.
Jul 31, 2025
Jul 31, 2025 at 7:55 AM UTC
They talk in circles, tight and neat.
Each word a chord, each step a beat.
I match their tone, I fake their flair,
I become a hollow shell to fill the air.
They smile in sync, they laugh in rows,
and I contort where their flow goes.
A single slip, a stumble shown,
could leave me standing all alone.
I change my voice, adjust my pace,
erase my quirks, redraw my face.
They shape the mold; I squeeze inside;
my true self shoved and cast aside.
Their rules are riddles, quick to switch;
a word too poor, a joke too rich,
and suddenly, the air turns cold.
Acceptance slips; I lose my hold, because conformity's a ...
But now I see the endless grind,
a race to please, a cage for minds.
Why chase a place I'll never claim,
when I can stand and own my name?
No more I'll bend, no more I'll try
to fold myself for every eye.
I'll stand apart, no crowd to please;
I'll claim my space, I'll find my peace.
Jul 6, 2025
Jul 6, 2025 at 3:25 AM UTC
I am flawed, lost in the depths,
Since I heard the silence beneath their steps.
Their map is lean—lines, signs and names,
Not seeing beyond the truth they claim.
Through their shortcuts, they place me in a cage,
A simple outline, they miss the weight behind the stage-
What’s soft, unseen, warped by age,
With complexity they cannot engage.
This map of mine holds space, nuance, weight,
Unmarked roads and altered states,
It charts the shifts of inner skies,
The truths that flicker in disguised eyes.
It honours detours, dwells in pause,
And bends around unspoken laws.
They see it, flawed, lost, estranged,
Too raw, too complex, too unarranged.
But their neat world cannot gauge the cost,
Of all the knowing they’ve lost
Let them follow lines well-laid,
Their scripted paths in safe charade.
But don’t hold me to your labels and limits,
Drawn from shortcuts and fleeting minutes.
Let me be, let me fly,
To map my uncharted sky
Jun 14, 2025
Jun 14, 2025 at 8:29 AM UTC
When did children lose their love of learning?
When they were told to conform,
To forget their being,
To discard interests, agency, creativity
My own complicity
In the stifling of identity
Authenticity, a digression of the self,
A dissolution of swarming
Complexities
When did I gain my love of learning?
The burning crucible
Of curiosity
Set aflame by rejection of conformity
Constraints, curriculum, crushing expectations
and a world disintegrating
fires of digressions
When is conformity an expression of authenticity?
When is authenticity just another form of conformity?
Jan 30, 2025
Jan 30, 2025 at 12:14 PM UTC
A diversion at play,
A separatist dismay.
To inform you of worry,
So that now you’re sorry.
No self for you,
You have what comes due.
Colors they besiege,
To fill their barbaric siege.
Tell them woe thee.
And now, worries see.
Weakness in what is selfless,
Holy what they draw out.
They slander what they spout.
They are superior,
For their inferior.
Nonsense at play,
So don’t let it dismay.
History repeats,
But you have the cheats.
Let them be,
So they can end what they see.
May 15, 2025
May 15, 2025 at 11:11 PM UTC
I am weird
Born weird
And in the desperate urge not to be
I tried to take another form —
A shape made from a mold that wasn’t mine.
And the pain of not fitting into what was expected off me…
Turned into despair.
Claustrophobic, crushed
Inside a mold that was never made for my shape.
And the pain?
The pain of the molds
Was greater than the despair itself.
Still, I go on
Still…
Weird.
Apr 30, 2025
Apr 30, 2025 at 3:42 PM UTC
No real wonder
How I got it
The skeleton
In my closet
I felt left out
So I bought it
Apr 24, 2025
Apr 24, 2025 at 11:23 AM UTC
inspired by tony labrusca's portrayal of josé rizal
babae likes me contained.
me—a tupperware full of lumpia.
i'm soggy, *****
bitch—inday—i'm gwapo. fried uy.
sorry. soggy.
druggy. sorry.
my chest tattoos?
yes, they can be removed.
will that be provided in my—
nevermind. thank you.
she opened her purse.
hard candy.
waving me away.
sorry carb-eating lad.
she is just ******* hard candy.
cgeh. babay. cgeh bi.
jose, they say you wrote novels.
but i wonder—
did you ever write yourself out?
did you watch your own ink
bleed into the soil?
did you wish for something softer?
in the way i am devoured. hero forgotten.
in the way i am swallowed
whole—one piso coin
by lovers, by history, by a name
they gave me before i ever
spoke too. ii
Mar 22, 2025
Mar 22, 2025 at 4:00 AM UTC
Are we free anymore? I’ve asked myself lately,
Sure, it seems so, but a few things are shady,
Well, more than a few; in fact most of our lives
Are controlled and well-governed like dogs kept on lines.
Last week my own neighbor was caught and arrested
For owning plants curing her cancer, depression,
Science speaks truth but the Law doesn’t mind
Their care is your sentence, not the healing inside.
We’re ruled by fear, I’ve come to conclude
It’s limiting consciousness, limiting mood
Forced to pay off all those bills in the mail
Or they’ll haul you away to community jail.
It’s not always this way—look at it like this,
We do have a large sum of freedom as kids,
We can eat, speak, dress, and play how we please
Before the real world arrives, subjugating this ease.
“Get good grades in school, be quiet, and listen,
Better cut the tomfoolery or end up in prison,
Repent all your sins or you can’t go to Heaven”
...Are drilled in our heads by the time we reach seven.
Yes, it is fear; now much clearer to me,
Yet sadly too subtle for the masses to see,
Some of us hope that things will get better,
So we dogs may finally stray from our tether.
Jan 31, 2025
Jan 31, 2025 at 8:12 PM UTC
Always be just fine.
Stay out of trouble.
Get back in the line.
Build you a bubble.
Don’t ever gamble.
Give up your dreaming.
Best not to ramble.
***** out your scheming.
Never should you rave.
Don’t you take a risk.
Always best to cave.
Abide the tsk tsk tsk.
Dec 16, 2024
Dec 16, 2024 at 5:39 PM UTC
The beauty of made beds?
Irony on the verge of beauty cope?
Settling bared for a beauty, in the name of sleep?
A question of simplicity, for beauty to requite a hope?
Soul, a passion has come, to ye...
Let with solemn have, and the actual
Powers that since, singing the soul of worth into view be
The rage of decency, to earn the better of a future who...
Pride is a laboring voice, with a moment to same notion
Needfulness with a bared truth, eats from the hand of beauty
Sound to solace, and the devil to see, is the world's sin
Comparing *** with a riddance's dance, is only lucre
How or the risks of hatred...
Know love like a challenge of sincerity, that hasn't
Adage and cares intoned with a house sulking, is terror's lead?
When avid is a searching heed, it is a voice that wasn't...
Save honor the time, and you will see...
A choice of significance to a wish, larger than life atoned
With the reasons of virtue, that began with a seeming victory
Of life in the grasp of love, that has sat a champion of a soul, one...
A chance meeting with something besides beauty...?
Sour and in deference to liberty, the question of earned kind
Is for the senses, of witnessing the grace it took, each
Idea of life continuing to be, the reality we made, for a heart and a mind...
Jul 8, 2024
Jul 8, 2024 at 3:01 AM UTC
19/08/2023
Hapless who strain,
voice and words for people,
hapless who drill
thinking it's lethal,
this folly encourages,
the ethos of silence,
on paper, counterfeit order stands,
while hastened thoughts simmer
in a cauldron of violence.
If I catch sight of you
with a pavulon vial,
I'll behead you for cheating,
engage, fight me,
draw the trenchant blade,
low profiled, distant, and shallow,
instead of laughter from the coffin.
Pull out your prosthetic faith,
before hissing Christ swallows
the descending heaven prospect.
Give me an authentic shoot-out,
where you bleed till death,
give me a duel,
light up a matchstick,
entourage with a
black powder keg.
On a formica table,
you roll the dice
if you lose,
whip yourself,
and one archangel dies.
If I lose,
tie a bangalore
around filthy neck,
and my words of nonsense
will meet a disgusted hail marrow crusade.
Where I challenged,
pleasingly conforming chains,
we'll answer who follows
a pale reflection of faith.
So pick up the glove
before it taints,
silence isn't priceless,
words foreshadow the pain,
one has to die
for the other's blemishes,
deception, venom, or vain.
Unholster courage,
gas me the rage,
ignite the fire,
matchstick awaits,
assume the form of a neophyte,
bare cognition flickers,
just hold my iron-branded hand,
till clash finds muffled eyes,
and clots reach one of our brains.
Just hold my hand,
the dice will turn into Pontius Pilate's
pointing finger, whose candle fades,
just hold my hand,
one ends up shrouded
in blasphemy cloak,
anointed pariah,
yet authentic instead.
Or end up like Sisyphus,
with a bespoken
boulder-like cross,
bland, spineless,
stripped of sense.
Oct 22, 2023
Oct 22, 2023 at 1:02 PM UTC
#
If I can so easily see (and so deeply love)
both sides of your multifaced self, don't you think
you also can start at least try seeing and loving
yourself as equally beautiful (simultaneously, so) parts,
who's congruent sum so beautifully make within you,
the whole?
Look at you shoot and scoot (run back and hide)
after never even (until now) having a taste of being seen
(and yes, Babe.. loved) for who it is that you truly are
( a beautifully.. goobery, complex sum of the whole)..
growing, as you little by little embrace the truth,
and in doing so, have the broken-into-shards ,
tainted perspective within your trauma-stricken mind
become slowly rebuilt and renewed
into an accurate picture of the true you..
Even if that picture is conveyed back to you
as I hold the mirror's reflection up to you
(a reflection that your beautifully.. at times, open heart
paints upon innerwall linings of my heart-infused soul)
and then you admittedly (your beautiful honesty, again)
jet back into your world of daily distractions..
So I say to you, beautiful girl..
It is you that chose to reveal to me your true self
in a way that I could so easily grasp within all of who I am
as I struggled to keep myself from truly falling in love
with your gorgeously-blatant honesty..
so I ask you once again--
Why would you so beautifully choose to paint
your true self upon the inside of a man
that you knew and believed could actually convey
the utter and beautiful reality
of that incredible picture back to you:
but do it in such an unholy, sneaky way
as to be able to bypass any and all of your intricate,
security (survival) based defense system
in a way that the true view of you could (and can)
actually get through?
You fear the congealed congruency of the truth
of your own consolidated glory,
as if you are forced to live within the resignation
that the true parts within you
cannot co-exist equally and simultaneously
within you at the same time,
without the (feared) unbearable tension
and anxiety within you
causing your own spontaneous annihilation.
But still, young Beautiful...
You showed me you, anyways.
You did not do it because you hate you,
that we can both agree on..
But the manufactured (created) you
has a whole world of relation (its own form of 'connection')
*built around the you that feels safe inside
if the presented image to that world
remains loved and cherished*
But also, good as people that they are.. they find you..
(you, who so well emanates a self that congeals
with their emanated self).
..So when you enter into a room
that you can truly breathe (as your true self) in--
As you prepare to exit its beautiful doors,
you almost have to (temporarily) sever all there is of you
that you have so beautifully and tangibly painted (imprinted)
upon the insides of all of who it is that I am.
You are beautiful within your entirety.
I am not intimated by it, nor am I threatened
by the possibility of its beautifully shining glory
being 'stolen away' by another. The gift of it all to me
is that you have chosen to reveal your true self to me
even though you very well knew
what it was going to cost you--
(the stronghold within your manufactured self)
And so now, here you are--
shaking and trembling within the
unprotected tenderness of your own, newfound Glory.
You feel it here within these four walls
like you have felt it in no other place on earth,
..So why would you want to betray yourself
by running and hiding back into your detachment?
It is horrifying to be seen and loved like this, I agree..
But think of this...
What if what is seen and felt (Loved)
within the four walls of this private room
we are in together here,
is the true taste and pieces of True reality,
and most all outside of this,
only continual extensions of 'the game'.
What if this right here is how life (love)
was truly meant to be experienced and lived,
and most all other things out there..
just a well-built and contrived (machine) of distraction.
Let your own heart be your guide.
You can sit and play my guitars
while you unfold so beautifully (as you so well do)
right in front of me. In turn..
and through day after day
of me being there for you like that,
your beautiful war-torn mind will slowly
(and then, quickly) become renewed.
It will all be about (and for) you..
and when you have had your fill,
you can punch me in the nose
for my having a hand in plunging you
into "the horror" of it all,
But you truly also for the rest of your life,
will never be the same.
You are fascinating to me in all of your brilliant-minded,
gorgeousness. You are absolutely beautiful, kid.
This is what is truly real. This.
#
Feb 19, 2023
Feb 19, 2023 at 2:08 PM UTC
We were placed inside a glass fortress
Dull knives were all we were given
Expected to know how to survive
We attempted to carve our way out
To leave a mark of any kind
Desperation flooded our insides
What will we do if we never make it
How will the world ever know of our existence
Right above our righteous heads
The sun flooded in
Yet we remained oblivious
To warmth it gave
The light it provided
The life it created
The sun was above us all along
The fortress was never sealed
We were far too busy trying to leave our mark
We could never see
There was an escape all along
Into reality
Jun 28, 2022
Jun 28, 2022 at 9:19 PM UTC