Soul suffering
- Martyn Foster
- Sep 26
- 2 min read
"There's a war going on. The battlefield is in the mind, and the prize is the soul." – Prince
Prince uttered these words, ironically (and rather prophetically, I feel), at the “Internet Life Online Awards” presented by Yahoo! in 1999.
Now, some 25+ years on, we see it played out daily for our engagement and entertainment, sadly. I mean, why can’t people just be nice?
It’s been a while since I’ve done some poetry, so, as follows is another original piece titled, “Soul Suffering” by yours truly.
Soul Suffering
Tired body, tired mind
War is the only god of humankind
A different form of McCarthyism
Hands soaked in “Blood Meridian”
Violence and catastrophes
“The Great Leveller”
Why? Why?
Tell ‘em that it’s human nature!
A mind for the mindless,
It takes its toll
A heart for the heartless,
“Modern Man in Search of a Soul”
The great rewiring
Creating the “Anxious Generation”
Not even Bush’s filters on the internets
Can stop this level of degeneration
Sleep deprivation
Soul annihilation
Mind & body vegetation
All for the next notification
Alone and asynchronous
Disembodied and disaffected
The disposability hypothesis
Who is next to be shot in the head?
These performative and curated lives
Robbing us our very humanity
External validation, do we fight and strive
Taking away our very last drop of authenticity
Allowed to make mistakes
Allowed to learn, why can’t we?
Constant policing, a repetition compulsion, it aches
Never allowed to be happy
We publicly condemn then privately praise
We privately condemn then publicly praise
Such a strange dichotomy we live in
Consciously unconscious, we drown more than swim
We fight, both internal and external
Individuals, relationships, countries
An endless loop, a returnal
Stop, my brothers in arms, please
A one-way ticket to Switzerland,
A final destination
I hope it doesn’t come to this, man
My soul is a-sufferin’
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