One-way to Hazy Conformity

image credit: mccain007

The pathway here is one-way. This leaves the traveler (and writer) with few options. One can follow the path into the mist and fog, one can turn back, or one can make their own path through the water. I instantly connected with the image. To me, it represents society's robotic mentality of conformity, blindly following this one-way path into nothingness. Everyone strives so desperately to fit in with what the media and pop culture portrays on television and in magazines. Reality TV has become the big thing, so what does everyone do? They model their lives after some god-forsaken episode of "Jersey Shore", complete with fabricated and over-exaggerated drama, fake, orange tanned lunatics, ridiculous amounts of alcoholic intake, and vulgar, unintelligent conversations followed by sex with whoever happens to be around.

So the first few line of a poem relating to this could go something as follows:

The panic is the nightmare;

the nightmare was merely a prelude.

Darkness swarming through vulgar veins,

laying diagonally in a 2-dimensional bed...

Mark this: society is automatic.

Continuing on: what other option do people have on this path? The media and pop icons encourage this behavior, as they partake in similar activity. No one sees a smart, intelligent, well-spoken celebrity reading a book or doing good volunteer work somewhere. Instead, we see pictures of them trashed in some nightclub, or alternating between jail and rehab, or even facing the humiliation of a private sex-tape being released to the public. Shame on them for allowing themselves to trust someone with that kind of intimate video, but more shame on the people who get a kick out of humiliating the lives of someone famous by exposing them to the public.

This one-way path in the picture above doesn't allow for deviation. Those who turn back, afraid of what lies ahead are society's punching bags. They face being ostracized from society by means of being out of the loop of the limited conversations people are capable of having these days (i.e. - alcohol, objectifying women, how "crazy" last night was, etc.). My choice is to dive into the water; perhaps find some middle ground outside of the one-way path and meet other like-minded individuals who still hold onto their sanity and refuse to sell their souls for orange skin and less cerebral capacity.

To wrap up the poem we started with a few more "inspired lines", we could do something like this:

For these last insomnia-moments,

I just want to close my eyes

and not have my social conventions compromised.

But these robots are exhausting me;

I'm going to wake up now.

Run with some ideas that may inspire you; possibly rant/free write about them for about half a page or so, and draw some poetic inspiration from that. 'Til tomorrow...