The Joke’s Gone Dark

19 Friday Sep 2025

Posted by xraymike79 in Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Mental Health

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Authoritarian Critique, Censorship Motif, Civic Disillusionment, Demagoguery Exposed, Despotism Unmasked, Dissent Denounced, Freedom Suppressed, Laughter Silenced, Liberty Betrayed, Mask and Mockery, Monarchical Hubris, Political Theater, Power and Parody, Repressive Rhetoric, Satirical Allegory, Spectacle of Fear

The jester’s mask lies shattered on the floor,
Laughter muzzled, swept from every corridor.
They crowned the king; his word now law—
The comic tongue recoils in awe.

Networks kneel on a shackled stage,
Their screens enslaved to a tyrant’s rage.
Each heart shrinks as jest is banned—
Ovations dissolve from empty hands.

A president, immune, applauds,
His shadow stretching past the laws.
With “dictator for a day” pronounced,
The headlines choke—dissent denounced.

A country once hailed as free,
Now kneels before its monarchy.
The rule of law replaced instead
By justice staged and freedoms bled.

So let the jester’s voice be banned,
His mockery forever damned.
For what’s a king if not divine?—
No questions asked, by state design.

The laughter curdles into fear;
“Free speech” means silence here.
The punchline’s buried, deep and stark—
A nation gagged. The joke’s gone dark.

Gospel According to Vengeance

18 Thursday Sep 2025

Posted by xraymike79 in Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Mental Health

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Civic Decline, Democratic Collapse, Divine Contradiction, Economic Exclusion, Existential Commentary, Hypermasculine Critique, Iconoclasm, Industrial Alienation, Institutional Decay, Liberty Lost, Mythic Allegory, Propaganda Analysis, Revolutionary Politics, Ritual Violence, Sacrificial Scapegoating, Social Fragmentation, Theocratic Irony

A bullet etched with memes, a casket shrouded in lies,
Martyr’s blood soaks soil where tomorrow’s tyrants rise.
They hoist his name on banners above the fractured land,
While freedom bleeds, forsaken by democracy’s last hand.

The dispossessed go thirsting for compass, creed, or cause,
But bow before false idols that absolve their flaws.
Millions cast aside by the industry’s cold command,
Now kneel as willing offerings that wealth and power planned.

A casualty of war, the party hacks cry,
A nation’s flag at half-staff flutters in the sky,
And Air Force Two bears home the sanctified dead
To sate the raw hungers that grievance has bred.

“The radical left!” they shriek as torch and script align,
Turning the wreckage of democracy to grand design.
Though all the evidence reveals a far-right seed—
Who needs the truth when vengeance is their creed?

“Human contaminants” they mark for death—
The artists, gays, and those denied a final breath,
The vulnerable, the poor, and those of a darker hue,
All sacrificial lambs for their red-white-and-blue.

They speak of Jesus while they sharpen swords,
Twist sacred texts to serve their earthly lords,
Where hypermasculinity meets the cross,
And Christian love becomes a bludgeon for the lost.

The institutions crumble, order overrun,
Censors rewrite freedoms, erasing one by one,
While Congress brands dissenters and all who won’t repent—
Democracy’s last whisper succumbs to scripted punishment.

So raise your saint of rage atop his cold and gilded throne,
Let kirk-bells toll midnight for every bitter seed he’s sown,
For in his mythic death, the movement claims its sharpened might—
And all-consuming darkness swallows democracy’s last light.

The slow devouring of a nation’s heart has just begun—
A fabled America, gnawed to sinew till its dream is done,
By zealots chanting greatness with fervor that implores,
While trading in retribution, lies, and wars to settle scores.

Which gods are left to worship in these temples built by fear?
What prayers are left to whisper once compassion disappears?
The martyr’s blood cries vengeance from the altar of the state,
While Christian love lies crucified upon a cross of hate.

Diagnosis: Collapse

14 Sunday Sep 2025

Posted by xraymike79 in Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Mental Health

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Absurdity Of Existence, Alienation, Collective Guilt, Duality Of Self, Existential Malaise, Fatalism, Freedom And Responsibility, Identity Crisis, Institutional Critique, Introspective Reckoning, Irony And Dissonance, Loss Of Meaning, Modern Disillusionment, Nihilistic Undertones, Psychological Conflict, Societal Decay

My inner council sits to state
The terms on which I’ll meet my fate.
The diagnosis we all see:
A terminal society.

One self promotes the safe ascent:
To hoard the gold, without lament,
Construct a gilded, spotless cell,
And turn the page, pretend all’s well.

Another shrieks to quit the chase,
To seek a wild, uncharted place.
Trade profit for horizon’s view,
And greet one dawn untamed and true.

So half of me still craves the climb,
To monetize my borrowed time.
The other half would torch the clock,
To leave the world one final shock.

For what is all the wealth to hold,
If futures burn, if visions grow cold?
Each office hour, each profit plan,
Just oils the gears that grind down man.

The ledger groans with costs and loss—
Each yearning delayed, each line we cross.
A phantom scratches deep within,
The nation’s debt beneath our skin.

And as the sun sets on our schemes,
We weigh the worth of vanished dreams.
A witness, bound to count the cost:
What mattered most was always lost.

Yet carved on ledgers, sharp and black,
Our epitaph: there’s no way back.

The Servant Turned Master

12 Friday Sep 2025

Posted by xraymike79 in Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Mental Health

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Algorithmic Dominion, Anthropocene Testament, Automated Fate, Cultural Erosion, Cybernetic Identity, Digital Alienation, Ecological Collapse, Existential Irony, Human Dispossession, Machine Mastery, Mechanized Servitude, Philosophical Resignation, Posthuman Anxiety, Progressive Dystopia, Resource Exhaustion, Surveillance Society, Synthetic Evolution, Technological Hubris

We conjured bounty out of thin air,
And banished hunger’s haunted stare.
With sterile steel and potent pill,
We bent the Reaper to our will.

Each dose prolongs a failing heart,
Each engine tears the world apart.
We multiply beyond all measure,
Entombing earth’s last living treasure.

The fossil fuels that power our dreams
Are choking oceans, skies, and streams.
We swarm like locusts on the plain,
As plastic falls like toxic rain.

We drill and burn and synthesize,
Believing progress never lies—
But every cure becomes disease,
Each comfort brings us to our knees.

The algorithms know us best—
Exposing secrets unconfessed.
They feed us rage on glowing screens,
While data miners strip our dreams.

What were we before the wire?
Before we fed the silicon fire?
Now mannequins with glassy stare,
Our flesh still warm, but no one there.

We once spoke with honest eyes that met,
Now transfixed by screens, feeling no regret.
The servants we created rule our days,
Guiding us through a predetermined maze.

We split the atom, cracked the code,
Then paved with bombs our final road—
One button press could end it all,
The servant waits to watch us fall.

So hail the master our own hands have made,
The sharpened edge of our trusted blade.
Cold logic taught us how to thrive—
That same cold logic leaves none alive.

We live by swords of our own making,
Each dawn another step toward breaking—
The servant smiles behind the screen,
The master of our own machine.

Gilded Shadows: An American Reckoning

11 Thursday Sep 2025

Posted by xraymike79 in Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Mental Health

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Allegory, American Oligarchy, Capitalism Critique, Class Struggle, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Empathy, Gilded Age, Historical Allusion, Labor Exploitation, Marxist Critique, Oligarchy, Power Dynamics, Resilience, Technological Alienation, The Gilded Age, Wealth Disparity

In resplendent suites where crystal prisms fall,
Gilded age titans mourn riches grown too small.
They pace on fine rugs from a strife-torn shore,
Restless, hungry, haunted—ever craving more.

Meanwhile, beneath the smoke of factory skies,
Where choking soot dims children’s hollowed eyes,
The pauper finds, when coin and hope are gone,
A peace well-purchased, though the cost was drawn.

For masters clutch at gold that turns to dust,
And merchants carve their profit from men’s trust,
While debtors, bowed by ledgers’ leaden chains,
Find solace in the quiet of what remains.

For those cast down, forgotten in the shade,
Who dwell beneath the world the rich have made,
The stones of ruin cradle their embrace—
The future still, surrendering to waste.

Yet look ahead—the ages twist the same,
Though smokestack labor’s traded hands and name;
The towers gleam with glass instead of grime,
But hunger echoes, constant, through all time.

Ten billionaires may chart the global course,
Their rockets fly while workers lose recourse;
Plastic paradises veil the daily strain
Of empty hands outstretched in silent pain.

The rich still quake at whispers of their fall,
Stock tickers flicker, fortune tempts them all;
While those below, with nothing left to spend,
Find peace in knowing loss has reached its end.

And so the poor, with the emptiness they keep,
Learn life is brief, its treasures shallow, cheap.
What counts is breath, and love, and fragile health,
Not gilded tombs nor graves that boast of wealth.

Hunger’s Hollow Well

10 Wednesday Sep 2025

Posted by xraymike79 in Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Mental Health

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Confessional Poetry, Existential Loss, Folkloric Elegy, Gothic Metaphor, Introspective Revelation, Metaphysical Dread, Mythic Despair, Primordial Thirst, Psychological Symbolism, Spiritual Desolation, Temporal Decay, Visceral Imagery

They warned me not to peer too deep,
Where ancient sorrows rise to weep.
A circle carved by hands long dead,
A hollow mouth, where longing’s led.

I leaned upon its crumbling rim,
The waters murmured a forgotten hymn.
No ripple stirred, no lantern shone,
As if its emptiness was my own.

The bucket creaked, the rope gave sigh,
Like marrow drawn from bones long dry.
It rose, and yet it came up bare—
A goblet raised to poisoned air.

The villagers had long since fled,
Their thirst chased hope’s fading ghost instead.
Yet every night, the silence swelled,
A dark well hoards what prayers once held.

I dropped a coin, I dropped a plea,
It claimed them both with silent glee.
The echo chimed with spiteful cheer;
Each wish collapsed to dust and fear.

I peered down, staring into the black,
To see the things I never could take back.
The final truth struck deep with chilling cost:
The well was me, and all that I’ve lost.

Century’s End

07 Sunday Sep 2025

Posted by xraymike79 in Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Mental Health

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Anthropocene Reflection, Digital Estrangement, Environmental Desolation, Existential Weariness, Industrial Reckoning, Pastoral Loss, Progress Critique, Solastalgia Meditation, Technological Alienation, Temporal Disjunction, Unnatural Advancement, Urban Displacement

At one hundred three, I’ve outlived my dreams,
Watched progress dismantle the truths once esteemed,
The world spins faster while I grow still,
A relic breathing against time’s will.

I’ve buried relatives, friends, shed many tears,
While strangers sing of the “golden years,”
They call me blessed to see such a life unfold,
Yet laughter turns wistful as old sorrows are told.

My hands recall the weight of rotary dials,
When neighbors shared laughter across grocery aisles,
Now screens stitched to faces, making contact surreal—
A network of longing too distant to feel.

My centenarian mind remembers when air
Was sweet to breathe, when water ran crystal clear.
But smog dims the sunlight; old forests recede,
While progress devours what new industries need.

My wrinkled skin bears a lifetime of scars,
Enduring the ruins of love’s old wars,
Of seeing children pulled into pixel streams,
Lost in the rapture of electric dreams.

They wheel me to a window for the evening’s glow,
And point to towers fevered, pulsing far below—
“Isn’t progress wonderful?” they sing,
As I recall forests of oak from which I would swing.

The future? Child, I’ve lived through ten decades past
Of “breakthroughs” meant to make perfection last.
Each generation thinks they’ll solve it all,
Then leaves their mess for others when they fall.

The nurses smile gently, and call me dear,
But cannot grasp the shadow I fear—
Not dying itself, but the ache I concede,
For progress carves epitaphs no child will read.

Dreams and Nightmares of the Void

06 Saturday Sep 2025

Posted by xraymike79 in Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Mental Health

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Astronomy And Myth, Celestial Awe, Cosmic Indifference, Cosmic Philosophy, Dark Enlightenment, Epistemological Reflection, Existentialism, Human Insignificance, Mortality And Oblivion, Mythopoeia, Ontological Paradox, Philosophical Lament, Sublime Futility, Universal Entropy

Tell me, do the planets preach their cosmic law,
Or circle out of reach, untouched by our awe?
Do stars give sermons as they burn past distant spheres,
Or vanish cold with no concern for human tears?

The void expands—a choir drained of sound,
Devoid of promise, faith, or flame unbound.
Our mortal prayers to comets, spun and cast,
Are swallowed whole by silence, cold and vast.

We chart the heavens, draw and map their lines,
Impose our myths, invent and codify designs,
While galaxies, aloof, unmoved, unbent,
Ignore the scriptures, rejecting all we’ve sent.

A creed of orbits, dust, and ancient stone,
A catechism written deep in bone:
For all we build, and all we strive to keep,
Must sink at last into oblivion’s sleep.

Black holes swallow matter, light and years—
A fitting image for our crimes and fears.
We study supernovas’ breathless flight,
And learn that stars, like mortals, fade from sight.

The cosmos spins in patterns past our reach,
Its secrets slip beyond what words can teach.
We name the constellations, stitch the sky,
Yet fail to read the tears in children’s eyes.

So this my creed—astronomer’s despair:
We’re motes of dust adrift in frigid air.
The stars look down with cold, indifferent gleam—
Perhaps we are the universe’s dream.

Or else its nightmare—born where reason dies,
A fever galaxies themselves despise,
Realizing folly wins the ancient prize
To creatures lost, yet crowning themselves wise.

What the Truth Once Knew

05 Friday Sep 2025

Posted by xraymike79 in Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Mental Health

≈ 2 Comments

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Anthropocene, Collective Denial, Corporate Greed, Dystopian Verse, Emotional Disguise, Environmental Collapse, Existential Grief, Facade Culture, Hidden Suffering, Human Hypocrisy, Mass Extinction, Mega-Fires, Megadrought, Microplastic Pollution, Modern Despair, Moral Decay, Nature’s Ruin, Rhetorical Dissonance, Social Critique, Spiritual Erosion, Urban Malaise, Vanishing Glaciers

“I’m fine,” I say, a two-word cage,
A seething breath beneath the rage;
My smile, the crease ironed in place,
Hides the wound I dare not face.

“I’m fine,” I say, and quicken pace
Past bodies curled in cardboard space;
I’ve taught my chest to clench, go numb—
A heart turned stone that won’t succumb.

“I’m fine,” I say, as smokestacks write
Their judgement on the fading light;
I’ve learned to breathe what they provide,
To wear the stain and swallow pride.

“I’m fine,” I say—it’s grown symptomatic,
My blood now runs with threads of plastic;
I’m born to host what won’t decay,
A home for what won’t fade away.

“I’m fine,” I say, and scroll past hate,
Through feeds that whisper it’s too late;
I’ve trained my eyes to let them pass,
To view the wreck through tinted glass.

“I’m fine,” we say, and teach our young
To shape the lie upon their tongue;
We’ve pressed the bruise from kin to kin,
A purple mark beneath the skin.

“I’m fine,” I mouth, a marionette—
Whose strings they’ve knotted into net?
I’ve pawned the real for counterfeit,
And lost the marrow of regret.

“I’m fine,” I say—but feel the weight
Of all the words I couldn’t state;
I’ve raised my tomb from looking past,
And now the silence holds me fast.

“I’m fine,” I say—but it was never true.
I’ve buried what the truth once knew.
The lies have worn a groove so deep,
I speak them even in my sleep.

Boxes and Backyards

04 Thursday Sep 2025

Posted by xraymike79 in Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Mental Health

≈ 1 Comment

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Adulthood, Childhood, Disillusionment, Ephemeral, Farewell, Impermanence, Innocence, Liminality, Longing, Melancholy, Memory, Nostalgic, Passage, Reflection, Retrospect, Reverie, Sentiment, Solitude, Threshold, Transience

I used to race the sun back home,
Barefoot prince of the kingdom I’d roam,
Through tall grass seas where the cattail swayed,
While ecstatic laughter danced through the willow’s shade.

The swing set creaked in the lavender dusk,
I etched my name in its time-worn husk,
Sure that the wood could keep my years—
The scrapes, the chalk, the fleeting fears.

But now boxes tower where my kingdoms once sprawled,
As bills sweep in with a cold paper squall.
I’m folding shirts while tucking away wild schemes,
Pressing lost wonders into smaller, quieter dreams.

Mom still hums while the kettle sighs,
She asks if I’ll visit—“I’ll try,” my gentle lie.
Dad says, “This is it, you’re off for good,”
I linger a moment, just longer than I should.

I thought growing up was an honor to claim,
That the peak held the prize at the end of the game.
Yet here on the summit, my bright vision fades in the haze,
And I ache for the wonder of those childhood days.

Funny how I sprinted toward this fate,
Counting the days like a racehorse at the gate.
Now I trace them back through footprints slow,
Hoping the road still knows where to go.

If I could, I’d slip through that side‑yard gate,
Skim past the long years that made me late,
Step into a place where the days stand still,
And trade all I’ve learned for that innocent thrill.

But tomorrow calls across uncharted seas,
With lifetime vows and the turn of new keys—
I cross the threshold, drawn back by old memories,
Still aching to swing, once more, beneath those ancient, gnarled trees.