utopia

To cradle Perfection

in your hands,

and twist it into something horrible

between your fingers.

That is

my purpose.

I've come to destroy

Perfection,

although now that I have

tasted it

I am unsure

as to why.

This world

of no disease,

no tragedy,

no death.

Yet somehow it is vile,

as wrong as any

malformed world.

Even if I cannot

understand why,

I must destroy it.

That is

my function,

as if I am

a robot

programmed

not to care

about anything

but work.

Time travel

is messy,

and I, it's connoisseur,

assigned to wrangle it like

an unholy snake.

This world

is just another loose end

in the cosmos.

Still,

I must traverse its spread

before I end it.

A surveyor looking for flaws.

There are none.

It is a perfect world.

As I walk the streets,

they are lined with gold.

Neon lights without any of the pollution,

steam powered cars shining

with the hue of

a future we forgot.

Everyone is plastered with smiles,

the real ones,

not the mass-produced knockoffs

of the modern age.

One blink and I can admire the sea,

another and I can stare across

endless acres of green fields.

There is no hunger, no waste.

Not yet, anyway.

By the time I am through,

all of this beauty will be lost

and I will be the cause.

I should regret it,

should mourn the loss of this world

that no one else knows existed.

I should traverse every inch

of this masterful canvas

and take its secrets with me

into the modern age.

And yet.

When I walk the streets there are no vendors

peddling their handcrafted wares.

There are no murals adorning the walls

or ornate rugs hanging out of open windows.

There are no coffee shops

with local art hung on their walls

and hearts made in latte foam.

The smiles of the passerby

when they look at you

do not warm the heart

for you know that they don't see you.

Their smiles are permanent,

not a gift but an obligation.

Their verity does not increase their potency.

Faces and clothing are plain,

as there's no need for anything more.

Even the buildings have turned stale,

none of the ornate designs of old cathedrals,

nor the geometric asymmetry

of the modern age.

There are no

lovers' initials

carved into the doors of bathroom stalls.

And in a world without death,

there is already the telltale stench

of overpopulation,

threatening to pull apart this utopia

at the seams.

Eventually, they will be forced to invent death,

to crush down their population

under the guise

of safety.

And the people

will agree, readily,

because they no longer have

the ability

to be an individual.

When you are a collective whole,

there is nothing left.

When you are we,

there is no more me.

This world must be destroyed,

because suffering

breeds dissent

and dissent

breeds humanity:

without it,

we grow stale

in the stagnant pond

of our utopia.