Peer Pressure

“The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

Human beings aren’t being human –
Wired to faces not their own,
Masquerading as one who’s found purpose,
This world’s hard to believe
For truths have been bathed in lies.

When the last bell tolls,
And companions fade into memory
These last words will linger
Chained to etched emotions
That tell a story or two.

Shallow days spent in societal prisons
Where one must die to live
Only to live to die when the day closes.
Acceptance sways in the corner, unstable –
But rushing to come when welcomed.

“Don’t get caught in the vicious squares of circles.”
― Anthony T. Hincks

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Source: The Skeptic’s Kaddish

This was written in response to this week’s We’ave Written Weekly; W³ poetry prompt hosted by David @ The Skeptic’s Kaddish. This week’s prompt given by Denise DeVries is to write the first line of a poem using some type of computer aid and follow that with 2-18 of our own lines. Out of the three tools Denise listed –

1. Random Word Generator
2. Word Contraction Generator
3. Poem Generator

I used the Poem Generator to generate the following, the first line of which I used in mine.

This was written in response to this week’s We’ave Written Weekly; W³ poetry prompt hosted by David @ The Skeptic’s Kaddish. This week’s prompt given by Larry Trasciatti was to write a poem that incorporates chiasmus i.e when the writer says one thing and then says something very similar in the next line, but the grammatical structure has been reversed.’ Submissions are open until Sunday, November 13, 10:00 AM (GMT+3) – please feel free to join in!

I decided to write about peer pressure for this prompt because the entire idea of it feels like a chiasmus – it’s even more enhanced at college and I find it curious but draining all the same, haha! It’s exaggerated in terms of human beings not being human because the peer pressure I’ve experienced isn’t cruel at all – it’s just an elaborate scheme of masking one’s personality to be included.

I’d love to hear what you think of it and your experiences too! As always, the poem is open to interpretation!

Thoughtfully yours,
D

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