Analog (Heart)

It can be easy in this modern era of social media and empty interaction to forget that we're all human and for the most part we're all looking for the same things. It's hard to tell where these big technological systems end and where we begin, we get so tangled up in the escapism and the toxic cycles of trying to get each other's attention online. At the end of the day, whether it's music, video games, movies, or anything else, we all have our worlds to escape into.

Analog

Casting this aching heart

To the back of my black lungs

Where the dark is there all day

And the devil's on my tongue

In this downtuned visual haze

This picturesque tracking error nightmare

The noise alone is enough to kill

Much less investigate

Down a trail of endless 2D horrors

Stretched pixels and distorted sprites

Blood-stained and gibbed across these waves

Covered in these fatal bites

Dig a little deeper dear

And we can get close to where we started

Against these menu screen skies

And these armor shard hues

Showered in this disrespect

A deep and abiding wave of self-sabotage

A bomb built of aged regret

Creating fusion with potential never met

It swims with synths into eardrums blown

Heart lost on a wave of saxophone

Riding headlong into oblivion

To live little more than half a life

Cast aside yet I blunder on

In thunder caught with mind undone

And fire like a memory gone

Leaving us to trace back steps

To hunt for ashes with the scent

Of so many defeats immaculate

To stave off the lingering descent

And rebuild a self-image shattered

As I sit to hit rewind

Broken bits now intertwine

To weave a single solemn thread

A web of lost love and regret

Such a melancholy burst of color

Sunburnt stars and violet rays

A shade beneath these shaking palms

Chasing the horizon of better days

This modern emptiness parades

On full display in shallow ways

With which we seek each damning praise

In hopes of flickering to life

But though I lose myself once more

Enveloped in this warm façade

This vacant color palette swap

A deeper vein remains to be explored

In flesh and blood and face blushed red

Flirtation and embarrassment

In letting walls like empires fall

And knowing my heart is analog

In eldritch horrors unpronounceable

Emotions I have squandered here

In each way that I have paid the price

And the final battle left to fight

For these strange eons that we face

Are nothing new to time and space

And though the conversion has begun

The digital world is still a human one

As I sit to hit rewind

Broken bits now intertwine

I let my walls like empires fall

And know my heart is analog

Photo Credit: Screenshot taken in GTAV by Rockstar Games, edited using Pixlr