"desensitized" poems
1995 saw the start of Generation Z,
the ‘iKids’ with a knack for this new-fangled technology,
Millennial 2.0,
caught in the limbo of the World Wide Web development and Rose Gold iPhones.
They say we’re adaptable,
but apparently we can’t make our own decisions about anything.
They say that we don’t care about anything
except for our tiny little screens,
but they forget who put them in our hands,
and they forget who they run to for help
when they forget how to troubleshoot.
They forget what kind of technology we need to keep sustaining life in the Information Age,
Caught in a crossfire because
Yeah, we’re 90s kids—but the 90s never really actually ended until 2006,
the only difference between two decades being
how much neon versus how much chrome,
and just how expensive accidentally opening the internet app on your mom’s blackberry phone was.
We’re nostalgic for all the things we can’t quite remember,
and half these high schoolers weren’t actually born until 2000 or 2001.
Most of us aren’t old enough to even remember 9/11, nothing outside of the news clips that our teachers show us in history class every single September.
I was born in the same year as the Columbine shootings.
The United States has not been at peace for a year of my life.
We are always fighting— fighting for everything.
Human equality,
posing arguments about micro aggressions and refugees, seeing the inhumanity in the past that we’re living.
None of us are older than 21,
under such hard scrutiny while Baby Boomers Wave 2 still run our country.
We inherited the Millenial’s exhaustion,
the generation before us spending our childhood fighting for all the things that we have never really believed in.
Fairytales.
Generation Z.
The ‘iKids’ who are going to one day be making leaps and bounds with technology,
the generation to nurse this dying planet back to health,
Millennials 2.0 who know how to learn from our forerunners’ mistakes,
who know how to adapt from Sidekicks to iPhone 6S Plus in less than a decade.
We’re the kids who have realized that fun is found in safe spaces rather than invading each other’s personal spaces.
They say we’re too sensitive,
but at the same time they claim that we’re desensitized.
And I thought we were the generation that couldn't make decisions.
Apr 11, 2016
Apr 11, 2016 at 9:21 PM UTC
Her shadow
Washed in sin, covered in blood
Oh, what a sad little dove
Festering secrets, slathered in shame
Purity poisoned, life to blame
Born unwanted, a mother denies
Behind the shadow of our eyes
His shadow
In dynamics
Of dysfunctional dismay
Lost in secret family shame
These emotional contacts delay
That we carry 'til the end of our days
Cast in stone, in foundation of lies
All these shadows behind our eyes
Her pain
Painful memories of long ago
Though, I know, I must let go
Triggers upon the aching scars
That burns within an injured heart
Full of fear, in the wake of lies
All behind the shadow of our eyes
His pain
An unending twitch
The fast fading smile
The ever bleeding heart
Of a broken lost child
Carrying stones up endless hills
All these issue we're forced to feel
And stuff them down, way down inside
Behind the shadow of our eyes
Her darkness
Hidden is a blacken variant
Attached with unbreakable sealant
Of life's destiny, from the gods
Concealed amid, evolved facades
A mind, compartmentalized
Behind the shadow of our eyes
His darkness
Desensitized to life, empathy left poor
Bottomless abyss where my spirit now soars
Love is a dream in my abandoned role
The pieces won't fit my wandering soul....
The window to a soul hides
Behind the Shadow of our Eyes
May 29, 2017
May 29, 2017 at 11:44 PM UTC
I’m not empty.
It’s not that I don’t feel anything.
The exact opposite.
I feel so much.
So much I get desensitized to my own emotions.
They flow around like water in every corner of my body.
Mixing in with my blood until there is no cell untouched.
It used to be a gentle lake.
But now It’s an ocean.
So all I can do is sit here and pretend that I’m a puddle.
Just like everyone else.
Sep 27, 2019
Sep 27, 2019 at 9:56 PM UTC
Its hard to not to forget
that they tortured our memory
motivated by pain
no
motivated by love
love for the living
we are trying to reach the living
those sensitive to nature still
not desensitized
by the construction of whiteness
trying to reach those uninterrupted
by the temporary dominance
desperation pretending to be evolution
hearts beating apathy to death
hysterical neglect of our trauma
native tint in our eyes
take our minds back
from the product
whose profits are imperialism
give them back to dancing
revolution starts in the movement of the hips
a cou de tat of sway
no one knows what you are
no matter how confident they seem
dance with your eyes closed
looking deep inside
do not get stuck in its reflection
the hysterical reflection
dance like every military just surrendered
into our hearts
the living are with you now
can you feel them in your sway
Aug 22, 2018
Aug 22, 2018 at 9:27 PM UTC
BANG; another kid, another life
another dark toned baby
taken away for no real
reason
another mother mourns
over her proudest accomplishment
gone
another brother cries when he
passes that street corner
another sister says nothing...
she is desensitized from
last week's loss
BANG; a different kid, a different life
Jun 27, 2017
Jun 27, 2017 at 8:43 PM UTC
Guys with long hair have agendas. And if they don't, they're stoners and 'agenda' a really long word, man.
Guys with long hair are the poetic types with acoustic guitars and incense in their dorm room and they hold their hair back with a pen behind their ear and they use it to write in a leather-bound journal about girls who smoke too much and have soft ***** so they can pick up more girls who smoke too much and have soft *****
Guys with long hair are the metalheads who sit in the back of class and use their hair to distract from the fact that they're wearing poor-quality ironic headphones that project Alice in Chains to everyone within a four-desk radius but no one's going to say anything because hey, that guy's a creep.
Guys with long hair are the classical types that play expensive instruments and have beautiful eyes that you can't see very often and have to keep ponytail elastics on their wrists, their wrists that never stop moving, conducting, tapping, curling, because Chopin slows for no man, no matter how long his locks.
And if you poured all these guys with long hair in a test tube and melted them until the agendas broke and forged and changed colors, you'd have him.
I found him in a smoky sweet basement in a house where everyone belongs but no one should actually live. I braided his shoulder-brushing hair without asking and saw his smile like a chunk of snow the size of your high school falling off a mountain, fast and white, huge and more important than anything else around.
I found him again in a different basement where only musicians belong. He invited me into the closet with the piano and it's like he asked me to crawl inside his head and hang out for a while. He casually mentioned his favorite angry bands while his fingers brushed keys in an order they seemed to know on their own, tendons and strings.
He says things that deserve to be handwritten in leather-bound journals. He holds your wrist with one hand when you shake the other because people have become desensitized to handshakes and don't feel the human contact of it anymore. He hugs to the right because you're supposed to hug heart-to-heart.
"People are going to judge based on what they see anyway. Might as well make sure they're right, sort of."
Feb 18, 2013
Feb 18, 2013 at 6:15 PM UTC
My problem is that I don't follow my intuition, even though it always comes to fruition.
It took me some time to really you down. You had my head spinning, round and round.
Ignoring the clues and the giant red flags. I still blame myself for everything you did that was bad.
I trusted you with secrets, bit by bit. Was it all just too much for you? So, you had to split?
Why should I feel guilty for being ignored? I'm the only one wondering, should I have done more.
But that's the whole point of your fun and games. You emotionally strung me along like I was shackled in chains.
How many times have I apologized, for you hurting me because you're emotionally desensitized?
Jan 19, 2018
Jan 19, 2018 at 9:49 AM UTC
It isn't a game.
But one can definitely lose.
There are no competitors.
Yet self comparisons fog hind sight.
Leading to more dreary backroads that the world forgot about.
It was fun for a little while.
Telling yourself that you threw away the world and not vise versa.
Was truly the greatest lie.
One that grew into actual belief for a time.
But found that the greatest hell.
Is watching your paradise burn.
Bound only by disbelief.
Dumbfounded.
It's a shame that when you lose everything.
Somehow your mind is the only thing that stays intact.
As if those aspects were programmed into humans in preparation for it..
And happiness got the short end of the stick.
Then to further rub dirt into the wound we create hope.
By means of pursuit.
Shakespeare knew the questions.
And left it up to everyone else to answer.
Only as generations pass.
We couldnt be further from any resemblance of an answer.
Let alone know the question has already been proposed.
Writers play with this notion and yield no two pairs alike.
Lifes most important knowledge sadly can only come from experiencing it.
But with the world in such a desensitized state.
The fear of stagnation is becoming the only real possibility.
Preposterous?
No
Predetermined the moment we chose to let others choose for us.
There is no freedom.
Only sacrifice.
Right.
Aug 27, 2017
Aug 27, 2017 at 4:22 AM UTC
I cultivated the land
Make offerings of grass to god
No reward from above
My brother gives him a lamb
Receives holly reward
Abel come to field I have something for you
Violence is rampant
Media highlights deaths
Killers makes history
Fingers are pointed
Desensitized people
This is our culture of violence
Rise up against me
Talk out of place
I will destroy you, your family, your place
You are just 1 more impaled
I take pleasure from you pain
80000 dead Viad rules you
Violence is rampant
Media highlights deaths
Killers makes history
Fingers are pointed
Desensitized people
This is our culture of violence
Take them from their land
Whip them make them your own
I am your master sitting on a throne
Thousands will die to see the light
Mr. Lincoln slavery is our right
Your blood is needed time to fight
Violence is rampant
Media highlights deaths
Killers makes history
Fingers are pointed
Desensitized people
This is our culture of violence
Now go and shoot up the schools
**** innocent children
Lets look at the problem
Violence has been normalized
Indifference to death
Shots ring out, who cares, one more is dead
Violence is rampant
Media highlights deaths
Killers makes history
Fingers are pointed
Desensitized people
This is our culture of violence
Stop all the killings
This is our culture of violence
Stop all the killings
This is our culture of violence
Stop all the killings
This is our culture of violence
-------------------
Written By Victor Timmons
Jul 24, 2016
Jul 24, 2016 at 12:45 PM UTC
Changing faces for nameless places
Nameless people struggling for existence in a nameless time
Worship the incoherent ramblings
Of countless babbling nameless fools
Bread and water lead the lambs to slaughter
Prejudice injustice demanding obedience
Nameless zombies
Becoming the robotic puppet
Of the puppeteers desires
With pre-programmed responses
Feelings not your own
Desensitized children
Of a race of morbid loving junkies
We render them fearless, then cry
At the mass of chaos they invoke upon us
Lost leading the lost
Devouring the beauty in their paths
The scourge of the free man
Who lives under the delusion of his freedom
Prisoners all
While the power sits upon a high throne laughing
Unbelieving how simply they all fell
And obediently they continue to provide
The avenues of deception for his rich existence
© Crystal Erickson 11/24/2007
Dec 14, 2014
Dec 14, 2014 at 11:11 PM UTC
O America, wake up from your dream.
Your top of the hill
Perception.
I plead, awake.
Awaken from your false beliefs, your
Warped view of the world.
Believing it is yours to buy and
Consume, while others starve.
O America, I see your shadow,
Cast over your deprived. A desperate
Attempt to hide the desperate,
The lost and the depraved.
The waste of your creation,
Left to wallow in the filth of
Your existence. The broken
Pieces of your people. Invisible
to your people.
O America, I see your wretched youth.
Apathetic and sadistic, desensitized by
Your lifestyle. Enslaved by your media
to buy any which way.
Your whorish children, your joke of a generation.
Raised like cattle in shameful schools, reared in
Broken homes. Self destructive and stupid.
O America, turn off your television prophets,
Preaching their gospel of guilt in exchange for
Credit card numbers. Bastardizing science
And teaching bigotry.
Protesting human rights and feeding fallacies,
Indoctrinating children with fearful remorse.
Extorting their sheep to build their steeples,
Making sin out of human nature.
O America, I pray,
Wake up from your nightmare.
Before you collapse upon yourself, before
You're swallowed by your unfeedable mouth.
Arise, before you die. Cut the strings that
Manipulate you like a puppet. Reject society,
The cultural cancer.
O state of damnation, awake.
Mar 5, 2013
Mar 5, 2013 at 4:59 PM UTC
A rain of bullets hit Las Vegas, leaving blacken skies
From disgraceful clouds of a loose cannon.
From the first 911 call to storm's demise
72 minutes downfall took human companions.
For them, life for one minute enjoying country songs
In the unbridled company of each others innocence.
Then good faith served the merry goers wrong
As the concert venue became the tomb of dissonance.
It hurts my heart to follow this story unfold
Of the climbing death toll, making this the worst ever.
Harder to imagine a mass killer cut from this mold
Of being so heartless and desensitized to life he severs.
To the victims accept my cries of condemning this worm
While paying homage to harmonious humans imparted from the eyes of the storm.
Logan Robertson
10/4/17
Oct 4, 2017
Oct 4, 2017 at 6:36 AM UTC
Friends ain't **** but hell waiting to happen. And even tho you're gone, I'm doing just fine
You were like a chain wrapped around my throat
Tying me back to the places I hate most
And now that we're done
My mind can finally rest
No more kissing ***
I'm taking my life back
It seems so long ago
We were nothing but close
We never had a fight,
Cause we both hated our life
And now that I'm trapped between my dark and her light
You think I'm not good enough to keep in your life
So **** you, it's not your fault
**** me, what have I done
**** you, for not giving a ****
And **** myself for giving up on this quick
But the time has come for us to say goodbye
You'll still be in my heart, if you're not by my side
6 years later
What have we become
Desensitized to life
Cause we're so ******* numb
From trying to escape
The same hell we came from
So **** you, it's not your fault
**** me, what have I done
**** you, for not giving a ****
And **** myself for giving up on this quick
So now he's got your back
Yeah you're doing just fine
But you cannot forget all the pain left behind
I know your secrets
I understand your past
I can tolerate your anger
And I saved your **** life
Well I guess you saved mine
A million times too
And I never would have guessed
I wouldn't be lost without you
But I'm dead, I'm ******* dead
I owed you my life but you gave it right back
and now that you left,
I'll just take it myself
Ending this fight
with my own ******* hand
****
**** you
(I'm so sorry)
**** me
(I didn't want this to end)
**** you
But you don't even care
So I'm better off dead
Jul 18, 2016
Jul 18, 2016 at 6:24 AM UTC
i swore to myself
that a flick of the tongue
would never shelter self-hatred
so deeply embedded into the patchwork of my being.
contagion is a sad **** thing
and cycles seem to be an endlessly contributing factor
those who hurt cannot become hurt
and so we place our self-pity at the top of our priorities
disregarding emotion so carefully hidden in the fragile mind of others.
however there are few who's torment is only self-projected
i am one
an anathema that exists in silence
my past has been placed in a box full of secrets
along with the evidence of my self-mutilation
is there a way to keep my eyes shut and my dignity revealed?
this world is numb, and the apathy must be getting to me
because i would rather not feel a **** thing
than to be plagued by misery
from myself and the ones i love
however, emotions are not choices
and humans cannot be reprogrammed
it seems the pleas and slurs i leave in place of words
are what my familiars take to heart
bodies speak such complex languages
and not everyone has the patience
or the attentiveness
to listen to anything other than a cry
and although i warn
and beg for warmth
i receive only glaciers
and memories of faces
overwritten with impassivity
what i would give
to reach into the darkest parts of my soul
and rip out this sorrow
that has clung itself to the shadows of my psyche
in the depths of my worst memories
there is a wish
a want
a need
to take this heart of mine
and throw it to wolves
to be destroyed but desensitized
in my heart
is all my pity
my lust
my anger
my sadness
and sunshine darkened and gutted
so very long ago
Nov 21, 2013
Nov 21, 2013 at 11:53 PM UTC
Exhausted
from feeling
reeling
peeling away my exoskeleton
of mossy vehemence
Disgusted
from festering
pestering bacteria
leeching my energy
depleting my senses
Desensitized
towards romance
no chance
for me
Sinking
in a swamp
instead of grasping
for relief
Ashamed
for allowing
disavowing
natural instincts
Crying
dying
internally invaded
by poisonous neglect
Suicide
by choking on
your spoken words
I kept
May 5, 2014
May 5, 2014 at 1:38 PM UTC
I think Grandpa Stewart developed a stutter
from years of being interrupted.
I've never heard him get out a whole sentence
on his own, without Grandma cutting him off
before tonight. He hobbles over to the kitchen
where I'm doing dishes after dinner.
Expectantly, I look up into the ***** windowpanes
of his old, gray eyes,
his hands are shaking and lips quivering.
When he talks, it's like a secret, and he
tells me, struggling over sequence and syllables,
stories of being a volunteer firefighter. Days
he was the strongest man anyone knew.
He stopped a flaming tractor trailer, once, from
running away all ablaze when its brakeline blew up.
Set his jaw, leaned into the smoke, another time,
and pushed onward in steady strides, putting out
a fire in a nickel and dime store, even when
the hose pressure was pushing his line of
sweaty men backward into the street.
Where the hell is that fighting man? I look
at the hunched, wrinkled one before me and remember
the panic that crippled him when
his second son killed himself 12 years ago.
Knelt down as if in prayer, begging
for forgiveness maybe, put a shotgun under his chin,
and blew his brains out, a different type of fire,
with carbon and sulfur exploding just as deadly.
They said the bullet came out his eye socket.
I don't know how they could tell.
It was a stranger in the casket they pieced together
from chunks of skull found across the basement floor.
Haunted by fires, Grandpa doesn't sleep now,
answers the phone on the first ring, paralyzed
in perpetual anxiety, yelling,
"Y-Y-YES?! He-Hello?!"
His stutters are a endless seziure convulsing
on his tongue. He's slower, he's somewhere else, he 's
interrupted and doesn't try. He's medicated
and sedated and
smothered into this empty shell of
a man, sleeping, existing on a living room recliner,
****** with colorless eyes,
desensitized to fear and family, broken
in the wake of fire's senseless destruction;
all the charred ashes left in its place.
Nov 3, 2011
Nov 3, 2011 at 12:56 PM UTC
Shapes, colors, sounds
Unintelligible, thoughtless expression
Thrown carelessly into my perception
Cast aside all feeling, love
As you are shepherded into policy
Trapped in a cage of conformity
We become what we're molded to be
Body and mind, desensitized
Body and mind, dehumanized
The workplace has become a temple to the mind
A monument to substance; tear it down
Our existence is blind, meaningless at best
This planet is a wasteland; tear it down
Dehumanize yourself and face to bloodshed
Dec 23, 2013
Dec 23, 2013 at 9:56 PM UTC
insidious newsfeed.
apathetic "like"
(I guess they're getting married.)
assessing my worth
'friend' counts and Klout scores.
modify your post to be pleasant,
as to 'dislike' something
deems it unworthy of notice.
"Just got arrested, #lol-- free breakfast."
We are becoming a collective
of aging selfies and
isolated narcissists.
dissociative culture.
I am desensitized to my own
most precious moments
and have condensed their value
into how many people
care enough to click a button.
blending into the numbers
we are in the back seat of our own lives
and our weekly web-content
is drunk behind the wheel.
You don't need a machine
or the internet
to tell you
you're anything less
than beautiful
and a star,
inside and
out.
-r0
Apr 25, 2014
Apr 25, 2014 at 12:04 AM UTC
Calm and cosy
Curled up in my cotton tomb,
Transported back to the womb,
Where I dreamt endlessly.
There I smelt my life
Imminent, timid,
But ****** and vivid;
Here it is different
And deadly.
My life reeks of decay
As it burns away;
I taste the ash of my lungs,
Anaesthetised, desensitized,
Stupefied and condemned.
Scorched by conflagration,
Numbed by smoke,
But I do not choke
Just sleep
And keep on dreaming.
My cotton tomb ablaze,
A-kindle and consuming,
Collapses while still fuming,
Swallows me as I slumber
Or so I thought.
My maid she came a-wandering,
A-wondering,
And saw me here a-slumbering
In my cotton tomb of fire.
I felt her drown my death,
Extinguish Hell,
Restore my breath,
And I awoke in a fit of passion,
‘Deuce take me, what has happened?’
The timid creature,
Like newborn life,
Stood trembling, as well as I,
But told the tale
From start to end.
I implored of her
To not say a word;
The events of which have occurred
Are our secret –
Instead I enclosed her in my arms
As rapture seized me in its jaws,
Dragged me back from Death’s door
And threw me at her feet.
I praised her long
My preserver, my protection,
Then let her shivering form go
In the wake of my affection.
Jun 18, 2012
Jun 18, 2012 at 3:39 PM UTC
There's something so sick about
this emotional capacity
Before breakfast we plant atomic bombs in our neighbors yard
like bulbs of (glad)iolus
Haven't you noticed how much gardens look like graveyards
My cereal, ceiling, bathroom, and skin
All say Made in China
This homeland is looking more like that land
Ughhh and you can see the blood in my pink nail polish from that sweat shop girl
It's not supposed to be RED!
ooOooopps did we just learn how to commercialize genocide
I'm wondering when I'll wake up with a barcode
Will it be on my eyelids
my arms my soul
Maybe God was in the bees
And now
Now there's no more honey, flowers, or trees
Just time.
My brothers both went to war
It's not Wal-Mart
But it's open 24/7, checkout through Heaven
And I don't think they're coming home
Not without bones implanted in their brains
sharp, jagged, broken ones
That kind that make you uncomfortable with your memories
The one's that make it hard to sleep
Last week I found a dead cat
A dead bird in the snow
When I turned around the corner, I saw myself
I was lying in the street
Dead, dead
And I felt nothing
May 27, 2015
May 27, 2015 at 8:09 PM UTC
Nobody mourn,
nobody get hurt
We just project
redirect the blame
and sink back
into interactions
with coping devices
of mass distraction
The artificial womb
of the masses
Tethered by an invisible
umbilical cord
feeding us way
too much
information
Like hungry ghosts
salivating
the next notification
We can’t run.
We can’t hide.
There’s a threat to survive,
But we’re so ******* desensitized
Seduced by the school shooter
we don’t hear him coming
singing siren songs
heart-beating shotgun blasts
That leitmotif
in sync with
The American Horror Story allegory
Just forget it
Too much in the queue
Too many new things
We can’t reject this reality
It’s really ******* broken
Em, I’m sorry we’re descending
Much Madness has lost its meaning
It’s just the means to
unlock an achievement
Emulate another scumbag.
romanticize a villain
amplify the bodycount
Like how many do you need to ***** out
before they give you the cover
of the Rolling Stone?
It's comedically-tragic,
Stranger than satire.
The Judge, the jury
Executioner cutie
cut all your losses for ya
cashed in your lil tax deductions
The most sacred snuffed out
before the light could become them
Get woke a-f,
This is enlightenment!
Come on get
your mind blown!
He’s the one who loves
to shoot his gun
But he knows not what it means
knows not what it means.
Do you know what it means?
Oct 22, 2018
Oct 22, 2018 at 11:02 PM UTC
wake up
desensitized, oversanitized
want
unsatisfied
want
unsatisfied
want
unsatisfied
want
unsatisfied
Dab all over with aches, pains, and itches.
Struggle with gauche and forced interactions, coworkers and family. Friends?
No God.
POSITIVE THOUGHTS
POSITIVE THINKING
cloying, choking fear.
fear
Fear
FEAR
F E A R
Rub your face in the mirror.
Think deep thoughts that you believe are unique.
They are not. You are very uninteresting, probably.
want
unsatisfied
want
unsatisfied
want
unsatisfied
want
unsatisfied
drink until you sleep,
if not use the pills.
Use both.
Your room is warm.
You will have nightmares.
Aug 15, 2013
Aug 15, 2013 at 3:26 PM UTC
Desensitized by the sands of time
I'm abhorred you're a cultural cog
Bobbing on the surface
you find eating gulls disgusting
but don't bat an eye at nauseous oil slicks
I wish I could set it all ablaze
so we'd pick our destinies more carefully
Or more care freely
You see me as a motley mesh
Flesh covered by cloths from mismatched fads
Yet, you're a pretentious simian that's forgot our past
Just a gussied up grazer, disavowing discomfort
scoffing at any endeavor that isn't grass flavored
The chimers on the lawn are all robed outcasts
bellowing to the fodder eating fodder
the posh set the stalks to be mowed over
But for the justice of all the inside out bulls
leaving their wallets on the ground
the entrail fashion never catches on
Jun 10, 2014
Jun 10, 2014 at 7:20 PM UTC
Whisper me sweet nothings of time melting away these regrets
Or how time itself melted away all these months and years apart
Assure me that the years have dulled these memories, diluted their potency
Lie to me and tell me these memories have faded or that time heals all
Time, the biggest liar of all,
Taking memories and simply aging them in oak barrels to be sampled like a fine whiskey with a cigar or a side of regret
Time doesn't heal a **** thing,
It makes tragedy tolerable,
Like soldiers desensitized to the smell of death and rot
Time can't heal a story whose happy ending can never be written as intended,
It can only lend itself so that the story may be rewritten.
Nov 2, 2014
Nov 2, 2014 at 8:07 AM UTC