Devolution

Where did they go?

Words of power spoken by poets ancient,

Men with old-world strength. They have been cast down,

Replaced with sycophants, with men fundamentally flawed.

Men of big talk and small dreams,

Of fast food and slow digestion,

Of outer wealth in an inner wasteland.

Where are the voices?

The ones like liquid sunlight, flowing, rippling;

Imperfect, but delightfully so, music

As made by humans for humans. They who wove paths through

The brambles of minds with their flaws, their accidents, their dreams.

Now, the minds have been replaced with empty rooms, reeking of cigarette

Smoke and loneliness, alienation, desperately hidden under veneers of flashing lights,

Plastic smiles, empty gestures, false hearts filled not with love, not even with malice,

but with grey, with fog, with apathy.

Where have we gone?