All That Keeps Us Apart

I awoke at dawn and my eyes were cement mixers,
churning conglomerate thoughts into instances
of smooth conversation,
taking chips off the shoulders of him, her, them, us,
contorting their manicured bodies to form the characters
of this exact text,
as each of them screams I DON’T CARE ABOUT IMAGE,
while pruning and priming in every mirror they pass by.

You were not born into the bar scene of capital hill,
you were not born with oversized headphones blaring Joy Division in your beating ear drums,
you were not born with lungs like coal mines and a liver with the consistency of vegetable shortening,
“I DON’T CARE ABOUT IMAGE, 
I WAS BORN THIS WAY!” 
These phrases running concentric laps along the fissures in your mind,
does that make you feel any less cliche?
Our generation,
everyone trying to be the ‘hot new thing,’ 
to escape the cold front they’ve predicted ahead,
while shaking down to their knees
with their minds fixated on the wrinkles in their peer’s button-down shirts,
seeing through to the wrinkles in time 
that made them so jaded.
You were not born with eyelashes of looseleaf paper in eggshell and mint,
You were not born with names like Bukowski and Kerouac stitched into your vocabulary,
like locusts and leeches that had you convinced
that the end of the world was near.

I awoke at dawn and wanted to take soldering irons directly to each of my pupils,
playing etch-a-sketch with my consciousness,
I DON’T CARE ABOUT IMAGE,
I WAS BORN THIS WAY.
We sleep in our clothes because we spoil too easy;
treading the line between ‘obsessive’ and compulsive’ with the symbols we’ve built
for ourselves,
and what over-analysis tells us those mean,
We sleep in our clothes to  remind ourselves that we’re more than just animals,
that we have ‘class,’ and we’re so ‘original,’
as we get swept away again and again by the undertoe of the current trend,

I DON’T CARE ABOUT IMAGE.

That person in your bed is 61.8% water,
is that why
you look to them to make you clean (again)?

You weren’t born with leather-bound notebooks in the pockets of your black skinny jeans,
You cover yourself in tattoos
because you can’t bear 
to let anyone see your bare skin. 
You awake with discs of copper and silver upholstered on your sides,
and you convince yourself that they’re the fingertips of your lover-of-the-moment,
that left you dangling like the iconic, hipster-trash rosaries
on the necks of every 20-something year old that’s ever been to Broadway,

You sleep in closets with your insecurities in handfuls,
crack your knuckles until you can’t move your hands,
to get the satisfaction of hearing something break. 
You weren’t born with chiseled prose flooding your mind,
you weren’t born with a black hat, black jacket, black shoes, 
I DON’T CARE ABOUT IMAGE.

I’m not talking about the drink specials on weekdays,
I’m not talking about the things you can’t remember from your childhood,
I’m not talking about the past 6 lovers you’ve had and how not one
could leave you satiated,
this is the Thursday morning hangover,
when you have to be at your dead-end job by 7 AM,
this is the time you forgot your age, and thought you were 83,
this is when you look at everyone walking by you on Pike,
and you dislike each one of them,
because you realized you haven’t looked in a mirror
all goddamn day,
this is when you forget your current love-interest’s name
because she looked like everything else
you’ve ever thrown away,

This is you,
in your human skin,
watching as fault lines arise between potentially cancerous moles,
and you’re reminded again that you’re only mortal.
This is you,
in your human skin,
realizing that your life isn’t lived through the magazines you’re published in,
or the beautiful people that smiled at you in some hip-s**t bar,

You were born
blue-eyed and blue-veined
with nothing but consciousness,
and that is all
that keeps us apart (from the animals.) 

'

Author's Note

unfinished

Reviews

[dieuxsansculte]

This is a lot to process at 1:30 in the morning, but I think you're wrong that it's only your generation. It's my generation, too, and, I can almost guarantee, the one before me as well.

I can remember saying these things 30 years ago, "image over substance" and "style trumps meaning." It was no less true then than it is today, believe me.

Eventually, there comes a time (at least it came for me) when image really loses its shine. That time comes when we realize we are living a life that is not our own, that is dictated in its minutest detail by a fickle and uncaring society. The only explanation I can come up with is that most humans are, in reality, herd animals who react not as individuals but as part of a pack. Like fish in a school or birds in a flock, the great mass of humanity moves in unison with the crowd and will never know any other way.

Great write, but for far too many I'm not sure even consciousness separates them from the animals.

[Zeitgeist Manifesto]

This is really heavy. You just took an entire group of people by the arm and just sat them down in a corner. The subjects you tackle here too a lot of thought. I am a fan! Loved it!