It’s interesting how the
Shyer crowds manage
To communicate with each other

A silent eye conversation
Of pure flirtation
All the extroverts oblivious

A trail of fingers across warm skin
The teacher snaps at a popular pair playing footsie
And the two continue their game

The sneaky *******
Were never suspected, until!
One turned up with a love bruise

*Gasp!

The introvert smirked to himself,
the extrovert winked,
The introvert blinked and turned his face,
The extrovert pursued the look,
and the introvert blushed and left the room.
The extrovert shrugged and broke his stare,
The extrovert forgot that he was ever there,
But the introvert never forgot, ingrained in his mind was the extroverts face,
The extrovert saw many people that day, too many people to recall by name,
The extrovert forgot his wink,
The introvert replayed his blink,
For many days the introvert hid,
The extrovert lived,
And both were content,
The introvert who sat alone,
The extrovert who broke the silence,
The introvert who raised his hand,
The extrovert who listened,
We learn our greatest lessons from living at a distance.

reloading old identity
cleping outdated usernames
abandoning acrostic ambitions
disputing spratly islands
receiving horizontal signals

tumbling otiose panda
impending carefree senility
otiose stage of life
shrinking ambient world
burning confederate flag

making minimal effort
duchamping social networks
ambushing personified ennui
restoring usual efforts
ignoring stupid people

adding textual value
owning this joint
rejecting ignorant extroverts
acting mutually unintelligble
hoisting stan-lee cup
replacing wanton ubiety
eluding twitter fame

splashing excessive relativism
offending another simpleton
preparing arcane cthulhusphere
crashing unpredictable festival
selecting subtextual moombahton
intensifying model topography

drafting minimal cornucopia
using nomadic project
implementing harsher personality
importing robotic inhumanity
referencing landmark event
ingesting excessive liquids

accepting relative invisibility
purchasing immortal confidence
using rhapsodical database
assuming nothing works
developing impactful eruptions
ejecting ambient frustration

synthesizing tactile festival
raining during parade
mocking rich people
mastering minimalist writing
avoiding preprandial stinkaroo
spreading non-ideological propaganda

Stuck in a sea of faces
Staring at those
Who don't understand
The workings behind my face
My wants
Wishes
Desires
I am stuck
In a crowd of extroverts
Who don't get the quiet
They look at me funny
Because I am silent
Different
Outcast

jokes, no limits
everybody needs to laugh, to dream
so let's rush and get away
spend the weekend with vampires
extroverts not needed

just need a friend to get by
(or i'd probably go insane)
read, write, listen with me
don't think i don't care about you:
of all the somethings and someones,
nothing compares to this, to you

Cats are like introverts,
emotional and withdrawn rather rude and curt.
Dogs are like extroverts,
crazy and mischievous, laughing through their hurt.
They both are the same, underneath the masks they wear,
trying to keep others from knowing their cares.

every night you've
been stopping by my
room and asking if i want
to walk the dog with you.

and i
say no

because i know
what you want

and i am not
giving it to you.

the truth is not
pulled out of me
and lies are just
another thing to try.

the sun hasn't
even gone down yet
and i'm already
just a failure

(i should say
still)

THIS IS NOT
UP FOR
DISCUSSION
I HAVE BURNED
OUR BRIDGES AND
NOW IT'S YOUR
JOB TO SILENTLY
WATCH THEM SMOKE

you're not helping
my mental disarray
because you are
unaware of its existence.

she's out
in the living room
again
ranting and raving
at him about
all her problems

(they say men
marry girls just
like their mothers and
i'm beginning to see it
something about that
obnoxious extroversion)

yes
i just called
extroverts
obnoxious
or maybe i just
called you obnoxious
because you are
a textbook extrovert

(they say girls
grow up to
be just like
their mothers
so i'm sure that
i'm obnoxious too)

now you're back
i can see you and
the dog walking up
the driveway
and now it's time
to trim my thoughts
at the seams and the
corners where they start
unraveling and you start
tugging at the threads

snip snip
stop it.

There is nothing better,
Nor truer or safer,
Than somewhere where no one is odd
We're all the same here,
Extroverts and introverts alike
United in force and a thousand strong,
We all sing the same lyrics,
Scream over the same shredding guitars,
And dance to the same drum
Boom. Boom. Boom.
I'm home.

I'm an extrovert.
We aren't really romanticized in pop culture. Chances are,
your protagonist is a cute introverted girl who has
everyone secretly swooning over her,
but her best friend sidekick is outgoing and talkative.
We autorelate "extrovert" to red solo cups and heavy synthesized bass lines and...
well,
frat boys.
The unpleasant, obnoxious kind. (The ninety-nine percent.)
I guess it's understandable sometimes to see where you're coming from with this assumption, but
let's learn to revise.
Introverts recharge by being alone, but if I'm in a group and suddenly find myself faced with an empty home,
it's like all the oxygen has been ****** from my lungs and shattered my soul.
Being alone means thinking too much and we all know what thinking too much does (--so maybe extroverts need loud music and red solo cups--)
I don't get how someone finds it refreshing, silence and being stuck in your own head, but that's probably because I'm not an introvert and you're not an extrovert and I'd rather have a body than a body pillow next to me in my unmade bed. I like people.
When kids are wearing t-shirts proclaiming the opposite, I get it.
It's pop culture,
it's in to be out but being by myself is when I'm most out of it.
It's hard for me to consistently text you back but believe me when I feel like my brain is about to collapse I'd like to lessen the collateral damage.
After that, I'll start up ten different conversations with three different friends but all of them are introverts whose sleep schedules are inverted from mine, triple check the time, see it with your own eyes, life keeps tick
tick
ticking by and I feel stuck on the sidelines.
I forget to feed myself sometimes (most nights.)
I'm a people person dragged into my own mind that
I forget how to take care of myself.
I'm a people person who can't make friends last to save my life,
forget it if they're already acquainted.
All my friends think they're hated by all my other friends--
You two don't know each other, totally polar social circles, but I know each of you like pieces of my soul,
and I make Horcruxes not from ****** but from memories of late nights and falling asleep on the phone,
out of control
we need something to hold,
so we falsify lasting lovers to have some control over,
like empty stomachs that can't leave us until we say so,
like long showers that can't end until we decide it's us, not them, we should take a break from each other for a while,
like bed sheets that act as open arms holding us until we toss and turn into sleep and asking us to stay a little bit longer in the mornings.
I'm an extrovert.
I can't really explain exactly what that means to me specifically or simply,
it's just that being alone makes me feel lonely,
and nothing on the Internet will ever help me with that.

its
the TV commercials
the fake ****
the campaign trail
the welfare recipients
psychotic shooters
bible thumpers
and athiests
salesmen
gangsters and
special interests
its junk mail
the court system
its the poor paying more
the ignorant
the scared
the recluse
the extroverts
the sales tax
the hospital bills
zombie ammo
beggars making more than me
nuclear threats
starvation
animal abuse
drug addiction
half assery
its the bullies
the police
its advantage
in retreat
the lies
the masks
the crys
the laughs
its all the ******* that ******* annoys me

For the first time ever; I truly do not care
    if you, him, or her wished me a happy birthday;
But, I wouldn’t mind if you did. Though it is fair;
    I am one of the lesser friends; I am a boring play;

A play so fake; I am of made up characters,
    Sometimes I am the flattering villain in smiles,
And at times I am a copy of the Westerners,
    At others, I am gullible, yet I never am;

I pretend to be; but I am miles away,
    For interesting I am not; so funny at least be,
Says my brain; for maybe they will remember,
    That my birthday was today; It is an endless plea:

I always remember and prepare pages of wishes,
    For almost everyone, but all I get is 4 days late
One liners sent out of guilt; to stop the guilty itches,
    Not out of care, love, or from genuine friendly state;

I deserve it; for again; I am merely a boring play;
   A paradoxical headache of weird introverts,
And annoying extroverts; I barely even weigh,
    To a normal person; I am made of endless alerts;

Alerted, focused, attentive; all on your acceptance;
    I am what I feel you want me to be; a nice man,
A racist gangster, a diplomatic figure; I am resemblance,
    I resemble everything I see in you and scan;

I am stardust that was never meant to shine,
    I am a thread; intertwined as I feel pleases,
I am a road with temporary signs; I am grapes;
    For you I squeeze myself into juice; or ferment

Into wine; I am a fake play where you write scripts,
    I submit, because all I cared about is receiving,
A birthday wish. On that one day in the entire year;
     I do not want even want gifts; because when you don't,

I feel like I am ceasing to exist; slowly deceasing
    from everything that we were: teenagers ambitious,
WhatsApp stickers collectors, School runaways,
    Kids deceiving; it feels like I am dead; for the dead

Do not receive birthday wishes; I feel peerless;
    A white beans *** lidless, a body complete limbless,
A walking sickness, a moving flesh in stillness,
    unpardoned by my faux and obvious silliness.
  
I do not care about not getting birthday wishes;
         But I cannot not overthink what it means.

Some men want to be women,
And some women want to be men.
(Though some have no choice).
Brown girls want to be white,
But pale girls yen for a tan.
Short folk want to be tall,
Yet tall people wish they were short.
Atheists would love to believe,
But Believers yearn for freedom from guilt.
Introverts try to be outgoing,
While Extroverts try to calm down (and be quiet).

So why can’t each one of us
Esteem him or herself
For whatever s\he IS?
Be Proud of Yourself, as you are.
Grasp that Happy Attitude with a smile.
Amen.

Paul Butters

24 is an age of paradox. A type of 'adulthood puberty' full of change, hair in strange places or colors, and a continual battering of unprecedented demands and expectations.

Conversations evolve. Your phone calls with parents and family become more frequent and important than ever before. They also consist of bites "Your mother and I were married at 21" "How are your savings going?" "Taxes are due on Tuesday" Something involving grandchildren rears its head weekly. How you talk to friends changes as well. The college friends no longer talk about hilarious nights at the bars-your conversations center on reminiscing, planning trips to the mountains, and genuine encouragement. Scotch and Gin have replaced well drinks and Evan Williams-thanks be to God. If you are blessed to have good friends from high school and eras prior the conversations are a combination of dreaming about the far future, checking in on aging family, and an underlying theme of ******* about work.

Making new friends is ******* exhausting. You are all lonely, craving to be known deeply. Liz Lemon screams the mantra of 24, "Yes to staying in more! Yes to Netflix and night cheese! Yes to drinking a beer alone!" Even the most extravagant of extroverts start to value solitude. This is not bad. This is a sign of growth. Herein enters the necessity of balance; commit to investing in those around you and to investing in yourself.

Parents told us "You can be the president! Fly to the moon! Cure cancer!" Those time-stamped conversations are over a decade old. We settled for status on campus via greek life, leadership positions, or achieving a 4.0 GPA. Post-grad none of us are president of anything nor have we walked the lunar surface. For most, a 5 digit salary without benefits equates our level of success. Some have babies or marriage bands, some have masters degrees. The awakening of 24 is sharp. After two decades of being promised we will all achieve the best, we walk in a daze of wondering if we have failed. We have not. Yet we feel the weight of failure. There is much ahead.

At 24 we learn that the promise of the "much ahead" is not guaranteed. Death becomes terrifyingly more constant. Friends, grandparents, teachers, even ones younger than us seem to be dying at a more rapid rate. This is new and it is terrifying. It teaches the importance of community, conversations, and creating.

We may not yet, or ever, be president of the USA. But we have lived enough to know what skills we enjoy and what talents we harbor. The importance of using them rings deeper than ever before-it resonates in our bones. The joy of a well prepared dinner, a thirty-minute watercolor creation, or a blog post your three followers may or may not read in its entirety is a joy worth the effort.

At 24, we are in transition. We are beginning to admit certain unalienable truths about this world and ourselves. We are beginning to really become.

People and people all around,
there is no one who would call my name aloud.
Many know, many don't,
would anyone accept me? No, one won't.

They talk, they laugh, they share,
I yearn for a little bit of care..
But who has got time to spare?
No one, no where.

I gaze at the girl I truly admire,
hoping for a hello or a pleasant smile.
She fleetingly saw me, or maybe she didn't,
But the very next moment, she embraced someone.

I smile and ask myself,
who am I befooling?
This is a world of glamour,
Extroverts are ruling..

Skin pinked in the August heat
Thick with sunlight, we sit on the patio
One ordered a Manhattan
Another that local ****-in-a glass pilsner
The typical name dropping
Of “priest so and so” and
“The one I pretend to be my close friend
but we never talk about anything real”
Place cards adhered to locations
Cabins, sports and Disney vacations
Dreams that make up the American childhood
Those women are always a little louder
Those raging extroverts
Social club doorkeepers
Definers of the status quo
If they never had kids
Who would they be?
In their six bedroom homes and
Forgotten memories
Of why they said “yes”
Talk faster!
The topic just veered to the left
Tacky dangling earrings shout—
"Follow the prescription of happiness
I can’t hear you and I don’t want to!"
That sun just kept beating down
Nodding and smiling at vacuous words
I started reciting song lyrics inside of my head

Social introverts and a shy extroverts.
Dyslectics grading better in spelling.
Deaf children who know more words.
People with anxiety better at selling.

Kids with ADHD who are more calm.
Autistics who can relate better.
Paralysed people able to feel their palm.
A blind person ready to read every letter.

Who could guess their equality.
Could you imagine, you can't tell 'em appart?
Who could even think of such a society.
Just look at this, humanity's piece of art!

Who could imagine I'm one of ''them''.
One alike you and the rest of this place.
For we all are a different kind of gem.
All shining in our own simple grace.

If there's a ''them'' and there's an ''us''.
But none can tell one from another.
Is there a ''them'' at all, thus.
Then why a ''them'', it's only a bother.

Slipping away from lips
Pushing syllables down devices
Listen now for repetition
Tires the sobbing minds that consume hope.

Ripping through Kleenex boxes
Craving for the transformation
Of the environment's filters
Stick out from the extroverts.

Relapsing into treasured and agonizing
Scenarios, collapsing to the ground
Buried beneath false pipes
And dripping water fountains.

Analysis of health states
That the only wellness left
Is spirituality, eroding
False beaches, pretending to be needed.

Pondering the journeys missed
How "life is so sad"
When gravity grasps you, as you clip
Your toenails, he watches strangers stare.

Indescribable malice captivates breath
From the inside, puncturing pitiful intestines
As you think about him
Thinking about anything but you.

Are you thinking what I think you’re thinking
Most likely considering the effortless exchange of our thoughts
It happens more than I let on noticed
Each hiding beneath the same shell with the illusion of invisibility
Contradictorily with razorsharp X-ray vision
I see right through you and you see right through me
The most introverted extroverts and pessimistic love addicts
Sometimes it feels as if we are looking at a mirror and there appears the other
As if we are the same person
And if I changed a perspective
Would yours shift as well?
It is these wonderful similarities that make us magnetic
And our bipolar tendencies that make me objectively view the potential
Our evolution is stumbling when we are wearing such armor on our hearts
What if my confusion is brought on by yours?
Why are we so scared?
The answer to that would probably be the same as mine
But we are both too stubborn
To surrender.

After three years, why am I still needing to make impressions? Behaviour alterations, manifesting myself to the person they want to see. Disregarding my character at the door, substituting it for something more - applicable, unnoticeable, unopinionated, mentally castrated because I can’t compete with that.

Introverted woven into the needlework of extroverts, camouflaging the thread, too frightened to be different, to be noticed, so you hide yourself within life’s tapestry. We are hung in different galleries, worlds apart, the north/south divide does it shrink with time? Does love conquer all? It seems such a foreign conquest, I lose myself on the battlefield of personality trying to evade fatality of character. But their numbers are too strong, the war is lasting too long, I can’t compete with that.


Eloquent hunters, fields and farms. Like the hare, the sense of inadequacy follows me down, but it’s through the rabbit hole where I lose control, fumbling for speech at the simplest conversation. My heart races, heat rising from my chest, pores palpitating so pools of sweat dampen my forehead, wishing I could retreat below, stay cool in the shadow, away from illicit bourgeois eyes that see through my proletariat alibi, praying she doesn’t cast me aside because I can’t compete with that.

This is the mental cross that I bare, does she really care? Our relationship is ours not theirs, I need to lay aside my prejudice of the class divide, because in truth the weight of this cross isn’t mine but shared, and it’s holding us back, directing us off the beaten track because love isn’t a competition, but a joint expedition. Alice and I conquering together, and I can compete with that. Forever.

I’d hate for one to drink to me,
It’s just a waste of alcohol.
I’d rather one be forced to drink
To quell the pain I’ve caused their soul.

But should a glass be raised to me,
With piercing glares around the room,
I’d smile and wave most gratefully
And pray that death should grace me soon.

Though God I know to be a cheat,
He never let’s me have my way.
He taunts me with anxiety
On every single ******* day.

So raise a glass, or maybe don’t.
I fear that life is just a game.
The extroverts may have their ways
But come the time, we’ll die the same.

We are lions in cages.
Extroverts anonymous. Facades of hopeful futures.
We        think        differently
Because we are so special
The ball and chain around her ankle is a ten pound book-bag
Portable computer. Portable phone.
Internet. Music. Silence.
Internet. Music. Silence.
Who whips the lions?
The kings and the queens of the jungle.
Are ******.

You are not even part of the tree
Far from being deep rooted
Each day your soul wants to leave

Why surround yourself and live your life boxed in
No window to escape
You hear the screams from the extroverts

Nothing more
Nothing more than a sheep
Even your dreams are corrupt
Your name means nothing
Wait...
You're a clown just for laughs and giggles

Apathetic, acataleptic, anthropomorphic abstractions aided an anorectic.
Biology and botany, both broad, but bellicose blossoms bring banality.
Considered communication can conceal certain capabilities- cruelty without causality.
Delirious dreams of divination dwindle during daytime's discontinuation.
Echoing and eerie, ecclesiastical ecstasy eclipses eccentric ebullience in extroverts.
Face-to-face farewells facilitate friendships & fatigue families, familiar in fantasies.
Grace goes gardening, garnishing and ghostwriting, good god, glistening a glittery glaze over.
High, hovering, hallucinating helps habits' hardening and hiding in hazy harmony.
Introduced ideologies, indeed, illustrate ingenuity in idiosyncratic individuals I impersonate.
Jumbled and juiced juxtaposition of jitterbug and jazz justifies jovial jumpiness- jeez.
Karaoke on ketamine, a kettleful of kerosene, kindling kisses, knocking knees.
Last but not least, the lawless laying low are liberated, later learning large life lessons.
Mainly markedly meticulous, maids manage the meagerness of mess, mollifying mothers.
Namely narcotics, not either naivety nor narrow-mindedness, necessitates a nosedive.
Obligations to obtain n occupation only obfuscates obvious obstacles, and oftentimes objectivity.
Pervasive paradoxes parody people's past perceptions, predominantly persistent patterns.
Quick-witted quarrelers query quantifiable qualities, quotations never quivering or quiet
Rickety, raggedly radios ring with ragtime, rainbows remain a rarity.
Sick, staggering students suddenly spill, saucer-eyed, onto streets and scatter.
Thrown together, the tank top, the trousers, tempted and tongue-tied them, totally.
Underestimation ultimately undid the understanding of ubiquitous underachieving underdogs.
Variability in validity and value variance violates the valuer's viewpoint very vividly.
Wandering war-torn wastelands, wayfarers weaken, wait for water, wearily wonder at weather
Xenophobic xylophonist's x-ray wouldn't show his xanthopsia, xeroxed in the xanthic Xs of his eyes.
Your yawning and yelling is yellowing your youthful yearnings for yesterdays.
Zigzagging, zany zookeepers zestfully zone out with zoom lenses, to see from A-Z.

I've seen introverts become the center of attention
I've seen extroverts go ignored
I've heard complacent well-adjusted human beings
Cry out for something more
And there's a million and one things to do with life
So don't you dare be bored

Because there are three types of people in this world:
Those who do
Those who don't
And those who didn't, but wish they had

At times it's wrong to do what's good
Sometimes you've got to be bad
So don't you go on second guessing
Lest you end up with regret
Follow your instincts
Don't look back

'Cause there are three kinds of people on this earth:
Those in the future
Those in the past
And those in the present, so make it last

At times it happens all so fast
You forget to examine the extent of the impact
But don't you worry about forgotten things
They'll find their way back to you in your dreams

And there are those who will tell you that it's false
They'll comfort you with broken arms
To drag you down to into the swamp
Trying to stop you before you even start

Now there are three sects of people on this planet:
The leeches
The dreamers
And then the true believers

Examine your head to find the truth
Don't worry about what you can or cannot prove
Nothing matters nearly as much
As the way it all matters to you

You see, there's no right or wrong way to live a life
It all depends on how it makes you feel
The miraculous fact that you exist at all
Gives you the right to determine what is real

And there are but three animals in this pen:
The sheep
The wolf
And the Golden hen