Paper People

I've never known a person
Who isn't made of paper.
Fake, friendless, flimsy, frilly,
We are all fools of falseness.
Is depth so dreadful for us
That words mean more than actions,
That life itself mocks better
Than this poem mocks us all?

Dear You

Oh yes, we hear the impurities infesting this world. They cut, they crippled, they killed us. You were made of us. But don't die now; you're not done, not ready yet. Even your death would not end our existence until you have discovered the peace of Earth. We still love these shattered pieces of a life. You can tape us back together and keep searching for wholeness. Hollow heart holds hidden hope. You won't succumb to the fear that fills nothing. You cannot create the hardened shell that surrounds so many who have hurt like you. Please continue. Future will find the unnameable quality that you ache to attain.

Love,

the remnants of your soul

Contradiction

Give. Collect. Injure. Heal. Enhance. Weaken.

Give life.

Collect happiness.

Injure bodies.

Heal Earth.

Enhance breath.

Weaken willpower.

Gods balance Generosity and Greed. Stand in the center of a whirlwind and you are stable. Flit around the edges and you are vivacious. Life lives. Nothing stagnates. Stability is icy. Icier than ice. Dead.

Remember to explore the entire world. Nothing can be eliminated without its opposite disappearing. Even this is a mere blindness, ignorance of its existence, for it will exist without observation. Therefore, deny nothing! I REVEL IN LIFE AND GROWTH!

Yet even life opposes and depends on its opposite. Please die, too. Expansion needs elimination. Growth does not occur without destruction. Life and death are parts of a whole.

Nonsensical Haikus

Life does not fulfill
Without enthusiasm
Forcing it to shine

A dancer is a
Willing victim of her own
Proud obsessiveness

Can you see beyond
The eerie death of a mess
Clean your habitat?

Dive, and discover
The airy, flighted result
Of abandonment

Death Wish

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

That said, I sincerely hope that my words might reach someone's soul. Some of the situations may bear a striking resemblance to my own life, but this was a mere framework in which to imagine the psychological plight of the main character.

No one cares, you realize. It started many years ago, this feeling of inadequacy. You are a dancer. No. You are a flimsy imitation of a dancer. Your friends insist that this is false, but you know better. They want you to get out of their way. You cannot accept the truth that you are sure of, however; unrelenting attempts to reach out to them have shown this weakness. You ask Timothy, What is the meaning of life if I can't dance? He hasn't given it a thought, mentally safe and content as he is. You as Alice, How can one survive the pressure from oneself? She struggles with it too, and therefore has no answer. So you tell them both what you most long to do: give up everything and forget about dance, life, and survival. What on Earth benefits from your existence? Nothing. Who on Earth cares for your existence? As desperately as you hoped for another answer, no one has displayed sincere appreciation for you. Why would they? You ask your beautiful, loving fellow dancers if one could die from a fall off the capitol building, which stands so close, so reachable from your dance studio. None of them hear. Except Sophia. But she just gives you a practical answer, unconcerned for your safety. Shallow, you tell yourself, They're all shallow. And I'm hopeless. The world consists of shallow and hopeless people. You resolve yourself to wait until finishing sophomore year with a 4.0 grade point average-- although you have no future, you cannot settle for anything lower than perfect-- before relieving yourself from life. This will not only allow you to finish in perfection, but also to eliminate any rashness in your decision. In a way, you feel guilty for wanting to give up. Waiting, however, proves to be a tremendous feat of willpower. Saturday at dance class, hopelessness abounds. A few casual inquiries about your distressed state fail to stop you from hurriedly dressing and exiting the studio during lunch, your face streaming with tears. You run to the capitol. This is it. The end. Like they care. Good riddance, horrid self. You plop down on the capitol square's lawn and examine this building through your despair. It looked impossible to reach the ground by jumping off the highest balcony; the building had too many ways to inhibit your fall. A nearby office building seems more promising. As you stand in front of it, some people type in a code and enter. You lunge forward, intent upon catching your chance to die. The door swings shut as you watch in horror. You missed your chance. After a lingering and wistful stare at the agonizingly unattainable height of that building, you plod defeatedly back to the studio that harbors the addicting and powerful movement that you cannot part from, even for the sweet peace of death. Until the first day of summer. With a smile, you recall writing to be or not to be? in your assignment notebook on this day of expectations. Once you return, people leave you alone. They always do. Except Sophia, who inquires after your well-being. The greatest eloquence in the English language could not have communicated your melancholic turmoil. You daren't disclose your wish to die, for you knew the degradation and dishonor attached by society to those labelled suicidal. You weren't suicidal, really. More of a dreamy, idealistic escapist. You could not live in your state of corruption because you saw neither value in yourself nor the fault that lay in you for your own uselessness. Rather than addressing a situation to fix it, you longed to avoid any difficulty. Months passed in this state of patient half-life. In an attempt to make as little trouble and expense for people as possible at your parting, you told your parents that they must not sign you up for all of dance intensive. You said that the first two weeks would be sufficient, that you wanted to do other things with your summer before your inevitably hectic junior year. It was that foot in the doorway that spared your life; without it, the door would have locked behind you. But you peered back into your soul and learned to appreciate your value. It is true that no one cares, so I'll just have to carve a place for myself in their hearts. My dreams are worth it.

Slipping Into Despair

I lean over the precipice of gloom. Once I start to slide down this compelling spiral, nothing can stop me from plunging into a cycle of hideous self-detestation. Doubts destroy my soul. No love, no confidence clings on. The only care I possess found me through a fragile, shallow delusion, delicate enough to break under the weight of the slightest honesty. I am free of all true-sightedness; the world is mutilated by pessimism. My unacceptable knowledge consists of false facts. What I see lacks the open-hearted hope I once sold myself, for nothing is worth hope. Hideousness overwhelms the delay of sorrow. It cannot wait any longer, so I fall into the welcome ground of death.

Hollow

Cruel wind carved out my heart. How did it feel to love? It was shameful, much to shameful, to care for other islands. Friendship coated the surface of my manners; inside, I decayed from isolation. A primal shriek soaked in desperate despair fled from my diaphragm, lungs, throat, mouth. Nothing followed. Blackness. I died living.

Living Death

I rise out of the ashes like a phoenix. New, too young to fly, I stretch my weak yet eager wings. I have done this before. Yet another time for me to find myself. Over and over again, I am created. Over and over again, I slowly decay until the flames overpower and consume me. Every death, a rebirth. Will it never end? I am bound to an eternal cycle, everlasting yet dependent on the waxing and waning of time. Perhaps, just once, I will fly away from the gravity of an unambitious ground. I will fall and float, swoop past shielding insecurity. All certainty, all cowardice is lost. Severe the rope that ties me to life!

Rainbow

Such beauty is shown
From each color on its own
In fractured light, a gorgeous rainbow

But the more colors united
The more that is sighted
In white light, a brilliant glow

So come together, my friends
Here, categorizing ends
No labels, and no need for strife

Now we can find
Much-needed peace of mind
To focus on improving life

Continue

The connection rolled through our lives. Entered, traveled, departed. I saw you for a second, but too briefly before it left. No control over the force of destiny. Farewell, Sight. I will not see you again. Now I am an island. How I long to taste the water that flows between me and others' islands. How I long for that water to flow through me. It is frozen by limited thoughts. No! I will continue! Rigid thoughts do not stop me. We are all one, and I know it now more clearly than ever. We exist for other islands.

Shatter

Glassy one-way mirror. Nothing inside, nothing looks out at the world. The world sees itself on your surface. She sees her kindness reflected on you, mistaking it for yours. The void inside you is attracted to her muchness, you need her for fulfillment. She does not know. She loves too much to lose her innocence, shines too much to see through the one-way mirror. So her light pierces your shell, the arrow of kindness kills death. You are gone, you who were nothing but a reflection. Where is nothingness? She writhes in the agony of impossibility, for opposites rely on each other's existence. Screaming, cursing, loathing all that she loves, all that she knows, all that she is, all that you weren't. Humans love her with the names Perfection, Success, Heaven... but she is Pain and Horror without you.

Transcendent

The harsh world pushed me off my branch, forcing me to spread my wings. Serene weightlessness defined my motions. The three dimensions of sky liberated me. Looking down upon the world and its foolish ways, I knew that they would never see what open-mindedness was until they lost their imprisonment on earth. Our world is diverse, infinitely varied, yet united through interconnectedness, with no separate parts. Atrocious, hideous, in its very unblemished Life, which is so beautiful that flightless ones do not stand it without shielding themselves from its full effect. Those who fly have learned the truth. We feel life and forget about ourselves. A flightless one came to us once. She knew our message, our cry of hopelessness and pity for the ones who trapped themselves in imaginary division. "Love is attainable," said the flightless one, "I fly in dreams." We lifted her so the heavy numbness could slip off her soul. That naked soul flew with us in a form like our own, with wings and feathers. The newly-flighted one is our hope for ground-bound sad ones. Souls are alive under dead thoughts.