We Must Save These Souls! (A Satirical Poem)
Hi all! You may have noticed this blog has gone a bit fallow in the past few months— well, I’ve got an excuse, I've been nose-to-the-grindstone on writing a novel. In this novel: young Earnest Blair yearns for freedom… and tries to find it by entering into the austere machinery of the US Navy: a place of discipline and losing yourself to the group, where your very name is owned, and escape forbidden by contract-law. Where belief in the Navy is inflicted unto all new recruits… but Blair is a cynic and never believes; without that cushion, he struggles against the mounting challenges that threaten to drive him mad: loneliness, pointless idleness, seasickness and the failure of young love. As Blair and his shipmates are swept West-to-East, brought up against the beating heart of cosmopolitan Europe, the underground life of Balkans ports, the brutality of war in Syria… they’re forced to reckon with the unspoken consequences of their service, and their lives are changed forever.
So that’s in the mix, and I’ll be posting occasional updates and excerpts.
For today, here’s a poem I wrote for the Open Mic Nite at Radio Bean in Burlington, VT on 10 July 2024. Enjoy!
We Must Save These Souls!
Come now, ye Abolitionists everywhere,
there are souls trapped in terrible bondage.
Picture that soul, shavings of God,
Battered and wasted under thick skin.
These souls trapped by happenstance,
In the bodies of men, who,
Seduced by big money and tantalizing power,
Let their souls lay useless and abandoned.
So come now, fellow liberators of our times,
Because the wealth is so corrupting,
The philosophies so awfully hostile,
The mind so clouded with sick fantasies,
What they must think to do what they do!
I’ve heard these things, first hand, friends,
The poisoned personality betrays a fearful naivety
Terrified senseless at our fellow humanity,
Silly financiers, woefully stupid magnates of industry,
Saying: the poor are just fundamentally different, see?
We must free their souls!
Those sorry creatures that boss the masses,
How we pity them, and their lost ways,
War profiteers made numb by their trade,
Yes, a sad mentality, for them necessary,
How miserable they are, with their whiskey poured neat
And their guilt like sinking cargo,
And their wealth multiplying like disease.
We must free their souls!
Think the soul doomed unfortunate to inhabit the dead-eyed glaze
Of the Silicon Valley engineer!
Poor Sméagols turned to Gollums all!
A micro-dose every morning,
To give their life meaning, because it erodes
Under large-language models and hate for the
Shit-covered sidewalks around nearby tent encampments.
Stilted, angry men: self-deceiving!
For their own sake we must take away the power they cling to,
The investments they sing of, damned to forever watch market trends,
Like petulant children, spoiled,
Ego a brick castle, bloody ramparts of Id and craving,
Do not take their pleas at face value,
When they whine and scream— they will do anything
To keep their precious curse! For their sake,
Cover your ears when they make their appeals,
It will be better for them, they understand not why.
They will return to the ranks of the living,
To work and be cared for, nurtured through their
Unenviable withdrawals. Poor men of former power,
To be nursed through this newfound discomfort,
Newfound mortality.
There will be no great pyramid for the pharmaceutical families,
No escape to Mars, no bunker with servants,
Nor digital serfs, no Little St James,
It’s hard to come down from unwholesome dreams,
But for that little slice of god inside, reunited with ours finally,
It has burst the bonds of selfish prison,
Can skip and play, freed now, because even the master is
Slave to his system.
We must free these souls!
—Liam CZA Noble
Burlington VT 2024