Numbers

Don’t try and tell me there is such thing as an individual
Don’t try to tell me there are such things as creativity
As risks as hope as faith
Do not lie to my haggard face and tell me there
Is such thing as independence!
Ha! For 17 years people have been preachin
“Oh America is so free”
“America is democratic, all about the citizens.”
And for 17 years I believed them
I was naïve, led like sheep shadowing Shepards
Suddenly epiphany there is no individual
In this society there is one and only one thing: Numbers
We live in an age controlled by digits, by codes
By the one thing most hate undeniably: math
It’s the inescapable hell in which we are doomed to live in
Who are you? Nothing but a 9 number sequence to the government
After a life time of living reduced to a simple code
You are the second or perhaps seventh child to your parents
Hold on I lost count
You are an ID number to your school
A phone number to the opposite sex

In school numbers decide how we are looked at
Decide our fate
What’s your future? Whatever the SATs say it is
Whatever your rank in your class is
Whoever it is that you are is insignificant
How your figures come out to be after the equations is complete
That’s what’s important
If you get a number high enough you might be accepted
Forced to give more money, become another invisible fraction
Of another student body somewhere else
Like produce we are scanned
shipped out based on how we are labeled

What are you good for? Not your “unique personality”
Or your artistic point of view
We are raised, molded into this figure
A figure of obedience of conformity
To accept taxes, to accept the economy,
To accept being a number.

When driving home tonight say I crashed
Pieces of metal sprawled out over the road
Sirens in every direction
Blood dripping from every orifice
Of my unconscious being
By morning, I’d be just another statistic
Another teenage girl, death by car
Even once my soul leaves earth
The demon of numbers follows me to heaven
Take a number and wait for God to give me another ID
For even he knows nothing but numbers

English has been turned into a math problem
Absorbing like a sponge the creativity the fun out of writing
A dependant clause plus and independent clause equals a thesis statement
Add 6 to 8 sentences now it equals a paragraph
Times this by five and the equation is complete, an essay

Who are you? Really? In the grand scheme of things?
You’re nothing more than a statistic
One more friend on face book to never talk to
One more kid at a desk to teach
Another mouth to feed
11% of teens will drop out of high school
One in 5 teens suffer from severe depression
One in 12 attempt suicide
Maybe if numbers weren’t shoved down throats
Until airways are blocked
Until hope was gone
Beliefs and independence sucked from the souls
Maybe if we were more than just a number
There’d be a reason to live