You know what’s funny-

People are funny.

And not in the Steve Harvey kind of way.

See, the question “why”

Has stumped

Philosophers

Astronomers

Writers

Readers

Thinkers Thinkers Thinkers

Ponderers

Inventors

For eons.

Heck, it’s even stumped me.

But I think I can now safely conclude that humanity

Never needed an answer in the first place.

 

I’d like people.

I’d like paper people.

They’d be purple paper people.

Maybe pop-up purple paper people.

Proper pop-up purple paper people to be sure.

Perfect round the edges, colored within the lines

These proper pop-up purple paper people would rule the world.

We could build a paper metropolis.

A little paper you and a little paper me

Among millions billions trillions of paper songs and paper screams.

 

We’d sit in our paper homes

In front of the paper tv

Droned out with our aimless muse

(you know with an occasional few stupidly nonchalant comments thrown in)

Of how sick truly is reality:

They can walk it off- just a disability

Rape no problem- that was just her dignity

Oh poor thing- she’s destined to poverty

Yeah- there are a lot of little bitty ity’s here

The only thing we lack is sincerity.

 

A little paper you and a little paper me

Among millions billions trillions of paper songs and paper screams.

 

You know,

Pretending is fun.

It’s easy, that too.

Especially when you have to pretend

That the girl off the curb

Isn’t begging for food.

That those kids in the deep end

Aren’t dying all the way through

That when little Suzie hasn’t come home for 2 weeks

She’s not missing- just deja vu.

That those tormented whispers

Are just the wind, not a who.

That the lingering sense of despair

Is nothing- not least you.

 

I’d like people.

I’d like paper people.

People who are afraid to breathe

So they hold their breaths as long as possible.

People who’re afraid to see

So they squeeze their eyes shut

People who’re afraid to fall

So they hold onto nothing in the first place.

 

This is what we call a paper world

You can erase and revise and edit

And redo and rewind and tearout and demine

And ask for help from strangers on reddit

Nothing is real or permanent or wrong

Sure this is a paper poem

by a paper girl

from a paper town

in a paper world full of paper problems

But the story of these

proper pop-up purple paper people

Is not fiction- it’s a memory.

And maybe then if we all try to remember

We can answer the million dollar question

“Why?”