Creator / imaginer: Dabbler in art, literature and sound.
These are dark days,
I’m not built for a world at war,
We tolerate too much,
We implement fools,
Knowing full well that they are the pigs,
Those who left the Animal Farm*,
Fatted and now feeding on the world.
*Animal Farm" is a satirical allegorical novella by George Orwell, first published in 1945.
The telemetry of happiness is not set in stone,
While the day to day shadows ebb and flow,
They constrict and entwine, then all thoughts tangle,
Inside our shadow, we follow any negative angle,
Life passes us by, forever creeping on,
Before you know it you’re wondering where life has gone,
Time is meaningless here, as it spirals into black,
Lost too long in my shadow, makes it hard to get back,
For the comfort of sadness, provides powerful longing,
When lost in a shadow, it’s only ourselves we are wronging.
I have lost my way,
My identity has been removed,
I feel nothing, my sight is blinded,
I’m numb, my passions lay in ruins,
Time flies at a relentless pace,
Can I exist, until this block passes,
When will art return to these hands,
To again be creator, and not an observer,
Will I dream again the way I once did,
When will I stop being so afraid,
I’m not the imaginer I once was,
I feel dissected and laid out,
Like an insect pinned to a board,
A facsimile of what was once fierce creativity.
I can feel myself slowly drifting into unease,
As autumn colour broadens its embrace,
The landscape shifts, trees become skeletal,
Lawns are covered in a blanket of the fallen dead,
Cold mornings arrive, giving way to brilliant sunshine,
While cold nights invoke a fear of the coming winter,
The impending solitude and confinement weigh heavy,
Seasonal inertia creeps, with a deathlike silence,
The state of mind the ice season brings is sobering,
A time when the elderly pass, and the young suffer,
Winter brings fat billionaires, rubbing their grotesque trotters,
While all hibernate to survive, until the next change of season.
Here it is again, that shaky over charged feeling,
The rush from the poison coursing through me,
Dependence, availability, sadness,
The three ingredients that uncover hidden pains,
I’m forever spilling what I feel into a digital emptiness,
All that is lost and all that is forgotten returns,
There is nowhere to go now, I am self-ignited,
I am lost in what can be, reality has no meaning here,
The pack I carry is heavy, the cup I drink from always empty,
Some souls get better, thinner, faker, happier,
Welcome aboard, we will never make landfall,
And you will never be free from your mind.
Stirring from sleep with a jolt,
The heart beating furiously,
The pulse pumping,
A gaze wide and confused,
Covered in cold sweat,
Things unseen move in shadow,
Inner depths cause silent screams,
No way out, there’s no way out,
Lost in dreams of death and black seas,
What secrets do closed eyes see,
More, than woken minds conceive.
And just like that,
I sink back into the black,
It envelops me,
Devoured by dark comfort,
I no longer resist the pull,
There’s no point in struggling,
It numbs all senses,
It keeps open eyes closed,
It mutes all sound,
It guides me down,
Then holds me there,
Until I can no longer breathe,
And just like that,
It releases its chokehold.
Welcome to the future, where clocks now strike thirteen,
Individualism is no longer celebrated,
That human condition has been politically corrected,
One central government keeps humanity in stasis,
One totalitarian leader wields blind control,
Sprawling interconnected megacities rise,
Tech controls the nihilistic mindset of a dead generation,
People disappear by night without warning,
Artists, journalists, writers, free thinkers,
Lives are deleted as the world embraces sterility,
Psychological pharmaceuticals are outlawed,
Desperation fills crowded dystopian city streets,
Populations sleep in instability, controlled by fear,
Supervised, manipulated, punished,
This is not the promised bright new world,
This is despotism,
This is now.
The world feels like it’s on fire,
Greed and stupidity pollute the air,
People suffer the reign of megalomaniacal pigs,
Morally corrupt child-adults influence and advise,
Disrespect and violence grow from desperation,
The stink of self-entitlement bites at the nostrils,
All beauty on Earth is violated by materialistic hunger,
Bigotry and self-indulgence are the new faith,
The new age of revulsion has begun,
Self-immolation is technologically delivered,
Mankind’s final act has been scripted and is in play,
A dystopia is birthed, screaming and untethered,
From this point there is no way back.
What have I done with my life, the outcomes don’t equal the effort,
I thought I was doing ok, well, the best I could with the hand dealt,
Everything has always felt so uphill, every choice felt thwarted,
I am unable to support my loved ones with anything more than words,
I talk so much, sometimes it feels like a con, but who am I reassuring,
I try to find hope in a world with no respect for the honest and loyal,
Debt erodes us all, it feels like there’s no escape, time is running out,
Words cannot build futures, words just soothe temporarily,
A band-aid fix, words eventually fall as fruitless as a life of toil,
Why am I wallowing, I agree that I cannot be everything to everyone,
But watching my children suffer, is a bitter pill to swallow,
I wanted to make life easier, but we all lead very different lives,
And we all made those midnight decisions that got us here,
It feels like life is one long shady deal, featuring different characters,
Deals with a workplace, deals with banks, we deal to get by,
Doing our best to survive between paychecks without drowning,
We may be better off than others, but ultimately,
We are all aboard the same slow sinking boat of hopelessness.
Dan Verkys 