Pure Snow

White snow blankets the ground, covering the earth in its purity. Innocence. It drains all passion and warmth from everything it touches. People reduced to huddling bundles of fabric. Trees reduced to skeletons. The world to outline and shadow. Only the innocent themselves can enjoy the snow. Small children shape their imaginations into white crystal, as pure as the snow they stand in.
Innocence is a sin. Pure snow hides the worlds true colors, disguising and disfiguring the truth. Ice crusts onto the things that are most important, distorting their shape, making it impossible to see reality. Innocence must be scraped away, chipped like icicles from off the truth, melted by the heat of life's sun. Innocence, like snow, causes nothing but heartache, is nothing but lies. Though the colors are hidden, they are not changed. Truth cannot just be forgotten. Reality can not be ignored. Not without a heavy price. And that price is your innocence. 

Breaking Character

Is this my curse? Is this the life I am consigned to? School, work, marriage, family? Is that it?
That's not enough for me. I want more. God I want more! It's not selfishness. It's not greed. I can't stand it! I can't stand living another minute knowing that this is all that awaits me. And when I die, what then? In any religion, what then? Reincarnated to live another life filled with emptiness!? Eternal life as a God, creating endless worlds just as normal as this one. Forcing others to live this life of mine? It is not ingratitude. It is despair. Complete and utter despair. For though my life will far supersede the lives of normal human beings, though I will make the most of this existence, this is all I will ever be. This is all there ever is. A life so far below any life I could imagine, that the only option seems to be to weep. For what good is anything else?

Macy's in the snow

I watch the rusty shopping carts roll by like a train of the wounded. Snow covered and dripping with half formed icicles, they are rushed into the heated store with the frantic pace of the dying. 
Aware of the peril, I place my heels against the rough ground of the grate, fearing lest I should be rushed into the warmth along with the metal carts on squeaking wheels that always turn just a little bit too far to the right. 

Satisfaction

There are times when poetry does not consol me. Times when the steady blade of my knife is all that binds me to this world. Slice. Cut. Slash. I carve through thin skin and pale flesh.
When I'm through my arm are dripping and wet, the knife a sticky mess on the counter. I feel faint, but the anger is gone. Now there is only emptiness.
With trembling fingers I measure out the little white powder, so crucial to my sanity, and arrange it carefully, exactly as I have done so often before.
Time passes, I am not sure how long. Inhaling deeply, I wipe the sweat from my brow and hold out my arms to examine my work.
With a bitter smile I realize that I've done it.
My Apple Pie is complete.

Less is more

I am a heartless, soulless wench. I have no emotions. I feel no compassion. I am a superhuman, a humanoid robot, a data inputting machine. Through the lens of harsh reality I see the world how it actually exists, without the fog of humanity to fight through.

At least, that’s what I think I am.

That’s what I think I am until the stress of my impending doom (and by doom I mean college) nearly snaps me in half and breaks down whatever wall in your eyeball holds back all your tears.

That what I think I am until I go for so long without eating and sleeping that my body shuts down and forces me to remember that I’m not actually made of metal by shaking every inch of me to the point where I can hardly walk.

That’s what I think I am until my frustration with society and with myself forces me to a Cliffside sunset, head on my steering wheel, heartache an unwelcome visitor in my passenger seat.

That’s what I think I am until I fall in love again, which seems to be a regular occurrence for me, and I hate myself for feeling things a robot would not feel.

That’s what I think I am until I realize… as much as I fight it, deny it, wish it away, emotions are the fuel that drive me. My poetry may be born of apathy and disgust, but those are feelings too. So I guess I can’t write poetry anymore. Robots probably aren’t very good at that. And they probably don’t have good friends either. Strike two.

I hope this isn’t a “three strikes and you’re out” kind of thing because I’m pretty sure if I thought about it too hard, I’d find strike three.

But that won’t stop me from trying to be like Data from Star Trek. He wished to be human and I wish more than anything to stop. What good can a mushy bag of bones do in a world of technology? What can a wrinkled human brain do that could not be done better and more efficiently by a matrix generator?

So tonight when I mistake Jupiter for a star next to the moon and make a wish as humans are wont to do, I’ll wish that one day I will be a heartless, soulless wench. I will wish to have no emotions, feel no compassion. To be superhuman, and a humanoid robot and a data inputting machine. Then I won’t have to learn how to control that mushy red thing in my chest. I can just replace it with a flash drive.

Emotions

When you acknowledge something, you give it power. And there are things I choose not to admit they even exist. Emotions are one of them. What I know about them is this: emotions are a game. You either play or you're the victim. You cheat the system or are manipulated by those who can play the game better than you. I don't have time to mess around with feelings. I've got bigger fish to fry than the cute boy in choir, better things to do than hang on a wire as someone's little puppet, a Master messing with my life just for the fun of it. No. That is a place I am choosing not to go. So when he hugs me and the butterflies start, when all I can hear is the beating of my heart, I step back and realize what's going on. It's the oxytocin being released in my brain that makes me feel this way, like I trust him and he loves me, but I know it won't last long. Feelings are just chemicals, inaccurate and almost always wrong. Instead, give me the facts. Tell me what's real, show me your true self and I'll show you mine. Honesty. That's reality. Truth exists. Everything else is irrelevant.