only one
Sick
of this era’s categorization,
overanalyzation,
and hasty labeling of human beings.
They label us all
smoothing stickers over our names,
across our brains
through our identities.
Categorizing us, classifying us
like separate species.
We practically need a taxonomic key
to comprehend ourselves according to their catalogue.
Like packaged foods at the grocery store,
our facts are systematically extracted
so they can take the next step
in making us the same.
Serving sizes called height and weight:
are you too much for the average?
are you not enough?
why are you not our mean, median, or mode?
Ingredients called symptoms:
15 percent hyper, 25 percent obsessed,
38 percent anxious and
22 percent depressed.
Calories called intellect:
An IQ of 100 more or less.
Grades, ACT, SAT scores, and college
determine your societal worth.
We are told how we live,
how to live,
through the labels,
through comparing.
The average still isn’t average.
No matter what they say.
But it’s easier to find brazen rebellion
than quiet, succumbing surrender.
People who try to be themselves,
embrace their differences,
follow their own rules and regulations
-beware----
Beware, for you will undoubtedly be labeled,
branded with the thoughts you don’t think
and the things they suppose you do,
and the name they call people like you.
And told what needs to be fixed in your brain,
and your body needs help,
and so do you.
“You’re broken you know.”
Try to hide as best you can
--a hidden observer, a silent statue, a wallflower--
eschew observation through typical actions,
but no one can live up to the expectation of “normal.”
You can’t stop living your flaws, being you,
which -in most cases- is a flaw in itself,
the inescapable toll of individuality.
Escape is impossible,
and labels are inevitable,
so what can we do
without losing the truth?
They will still plunge their prod into the belly of the fire,
-manic flames kindled by a fierce desire to understand-
watch the iron glow, blossom with heat,
to wilt who you thought you were.
It came from the inherent desire for knowledge,
wisdom, understanding of all;
in this age of information,
they want more and more.
They discovered enough about where we are,
what we hear, smell, touch, and see,
but then they wanted to understand us,
which was not supposed to be easy.
They took the easy way out
and lumped together individuals,
divided groups,
just to say that life is easy, everything is figured out.
They declare what we are,
a simpler way to say what we are not--
perfect, exemplary, the same, equal.
Now that’s the truth.
Bearing their branding is one thing,
but accepting their labels are another.
It’s a choice we can choose not to make,
and instead just move on.
Just as they have decided who we are,
we can choose who we are,
but our choices are deeper than the scars they burned,
more adhering than the labels they stuck.
Our idiosyncrasies are not symptoms
for a classification in your catalogue
of species who are hardly humans,
people afflicted by individuality.
Truthful and real,
false and fabricated,
who can say who we are
except for ourselves?
We are alienated from those who try to “help”
and pushed from those who try to “understand.”
We are the wrong kind of “special”
because, in their speak, it is synonymous with “wrong.”
The less we are forcefully shaped into characters in a play,
or looked at as lists of traits,
or examined like a math problem,
the more---we will become.
The more we are accepted as inextricable entities
made of fibers of flaws,
billions of broken pieces,
and feathers that sometimes don’t have birds flocking together,
the more it can be love that brings us all together.
Competing for average?
No one wins.
Comparing one against others?
You lose yourself.
I don’t need to hear how I am different,
when it means I must change.
If I’m looking at others,
how can I see myself?
Look at, think about, understand yourself alone,
without labels, divisions, and groups,
and nothing will be
unknown.