The Color Beige

I tend to wonder why,
In a world so big and magnificent,
In a world with so many colors and sounds and experiences waiting to be uncovered,
Why in a world with so many beautiful possibilities,
We feel the need to compact it into something we can look at for one moment and say there it is, that's it, there's the world,
Why we have to tuck in all the loose corners, all the wonderfully abnormal things that trick us again and again just when we think we have seen it all,
Why we take those things and lock them away as unnatural and widely recognized as better off without,
Even if you are not the one who recognizes it to be true,
Why do we do this to each other?
Why do we do this to ourselves?
Fooling no one as we say,
Life is meant to be this way and beige really is a lovely color,
And after everything is said and done I'm sure that we will be able to say that it is better this way, better then before,
As if it could be better,
As if the bird was meant to be put into a cage and looked upon for our own amusement and we say,
Wow, what beautiful wings even though we have never seen them fly,
No, I don't think life is supposed to be that way,
But what can we do to break the habit, set our own pace, to look the other way?
What can you do when the world is already separated into neat little piles?
One side for good and the other for bad,
With no gray space in between,
When everything is shaped and molded,
All the rough edges cut away so that the final product is a tiny capsule that is easy to swallow,
What can you do when every time you step out of line,
Or move a piece one inch to the left,
The world comes down on you,
Taking you by the shirt and dropping you back into place,
But this time they glue your feet to the ground,
And move the pieces so that you cannot reach,
What can anyone do?
We are beautiful and abnormal,
We are the things that trick you time and time again,
Never doing what's expected,
Never expecting what we do,
We cage ourselves away,
Hiding the part of us that makes us who we are,
The part that defines the way we smile.
Or the sound of our laughter,
We cut ourselves into shape,
Into cookie cutter characters that look and taste exactly the same,
Because it really is for the greater good,
Or is it?
We used to be magic,
We used to be able to sing without shame,
Or run for miles barefoot across green grass,
We used to be free as the horses that dotted the plains before we penned them in,
As free as the birds before we locked them behind cold cage bars,
Now look at us,
How could it have been for the greater good?