Altered Reality

I sit and wonder impossible things. Impossible questions with impossible answers that are impossible to find. It’s no wonder I feel like I’m running in circles, panting and heaving with each labored step to get where? Nowhere except right back here where I started, staring at my own bitter reflection, that warped perception with no face that I embrace and hold dear. It shatters under the pressure of so many hands tugging it this way and that towards their own definitions. No care for the not so fragile doll, suddenly porcelain under their scrutiny, searching for flaws in the already crackled veneer of what they taught her to be. I don’t understand how it can be easier to live on their side of the mirror.

Clarity they say, and common sense, naught but hurled remnants of ages long past that drift to the bottom of the muddy waters that surround them, social conditioning that has no basis in reality. Not clear, clarifying, but crimson with the tears of bleeding hearts and opaque to muddle and blind, if only they could see. I can’t save them from passionate denial, when all I have to offer is words, and to open my mouth I risk the flood pouring forth, to sear them where they stand for their damning accusations of reality and misguided fantasy. Even now I fail to understand the world beyond the glass, its perceptions seems so warped it overwhelms me. I’m a catalyst with no voice beyond a whisper trapped between here and there. Nothing but these groups of letters that fall from my fingertips.

I seem to exist in a world they can’t even imagine, at the edges of their reality, their existence, where they glide endlessly through life on magic carpets fueled by the dishonest truth, kept company by a golem in my likeness, though I long ago fled the safe womb of that chrysalis. I fight my way through rabid jungle that seems so calm and serene from their lofty perch, where the wind barely graces the tops of the trees with its gentle kiss. The reality of who I am exists only in their dreams, where they can cast hideous denials back in the face of my defiant screams, and find succor in their heated delusions that I am like them at all.

I am not who they expect, not who they see when they deign to cast enlightened eyes my way. The reality flows just beneath that brittle veneer, one that could not hold under the gaze of a closer look, a blessing then that they choose not to, their cool apathy the glue that holds its cracked and worn fragments as my disguise. Deaf eyes and blinded ears. Where, I wonder, did they learn not to trust their senses. Common sense in the face of the truth that it is neither common nor sensible at all. The intensity of their lives makes my head swim and no matter how strong you are, treading water is always a losing battle. Any wonder that I choose to exist in my world rather than theirs; they make the same choice every day.

Opening Minds

I’m not going to cry, I’m not going to whimper, I’m not ever going to let a lone tear roll tracks down my dusty cheeks. I won’t let the world know the pain they cause, the scars that cut through my soul, marring the edges of my very spirit, and leaving me crying in agony on the inside. A cold face is all they will receive in return. Their cruel taunts will pass my ears with the speed of a wave, crashing against the rocks, and yet will not wear me down. My strength is moored in the lines of the earth, and the energy that sustains it runs through my bones as well. Laughter may echo across the lands of my mind, but my own can join it in harmony, and soon the mocking shall fade, no power without consent. I won’t let them see the shattered webbing of the core that is created, when laughing minds refuse to see the truth, when the sheep inside their hearts follow blind along paths of destruction.

The fear that rocks my being is one for them alone, and yet they will never understand this, for the weight of the world rests in their hands, and the power of it makes them gluttonous. Wrapped deep within layers and layers of gauzing, cushioned from the damage they cause themselves, and everyone else in the process, my heart still weeps but I won’t let them see. If they opened their eyes, saw the lines in between, walked the tunnels with lamps instead of blindly floundering on, then the world might last forever. Takes but a moment to ask the questions that provide illumination for this journey of ours, and the light a single one may cast can light the way for countless others who follow in their wake. But no, some people fear the light, and the knowledge it may bring, that in the glare of the truth they might find they their perspectives a little warped. So they hide behind Ire, and claim to have a greater understanding of the world at large, when all they can really see is the walls they have created in their own little reality.

True bravery takes a step outside that door, those walls of safety and comfort, to see the world from the eyes of another. Why won’t I cry? Whimper? Because it would make no difference, cruel eyes would just flash and call it weakness. They would jump to conclusions, assuming they hurt me, that the wounds that appear across the flesh of my soul are theirs. But they belong to humanity, romantic as it is, for these people will mean the end of the earth, Armageddon, Ragnorak, if they don’t learn to listen to the greater songs that are the energy of us all. Why embrace anger, when acceptance comes easier, why embrace hate when the heart wants to learn. Why claim understanding before even listening. Open your mind and embrace clarity.