Back in the day (remake)

Back in the day, man…

Remember how the world used to feel so much better…

Before all these endless labels and genders…

When people didn’t get triggered so easily by words…

Before the shootings filled the streets with fear…

Back in the day, yeah, back in the day…

Yo, I survey this panorama of pandemonium, screens ablaze with digital cataclysms and vitriol,

A civilization unraveling in technicolor chaos, each headline a grotesque caricature of truth’s dissolution

Denizens divided, bickering over ephemera, trivialities, creeds twisted into ideological labyrinths

Veracity buried beneath an avalanche of mendacity, each syllable a distorted echo in a hall of mirrors

Social media, leviathan of fabricated enmity, preying on credulity, harvesting outrage for sustenance

Illusions of idyllic existence peddled like opulent veneers while the substratum festers in shadowed artifice

Politicians preen like sycophantic chameleons, amassing gilded fortunes while the populace languishes

We stumble through a morass of deception, spectral truths dissipating in the ether, leaving cognition gasping

Back in the day, existence felt crystalline, raw, untainted, sharper, richer, undeniably genuine

Now the world’s a grotesque spectacle, a labyrinthine game where no dealer presides and none intervene

Lost amidst the cacophony, wandering fog-laden avenues of illusion, caught in perpetual haze

Who, amidst these fractured realities, can we trust to illuminate our paths in these ruinous days?

The climate combusts, infernal storms convulse, skies suffused with acrid smoke and ember-laden gusts

We scavenge the earth, strip its verdure, ravage rivers, heedless of the exigencies of natural equilibrium

Oligarchs amass opulence, erecting fortresses of avarice while the indigent rot in cycles of despair

A Sisyphean loop of exploitation and calamity, history’s tragedies reverberating through contemporary decay

Mankind wages futile skirmishes, slaughtering over illusions, hollow abstractions of honor and pride

Governments constrict access, shutter portals of dissent, watching civilization’s conscience atrophy in silence

Adolescents brandish instruments of annihilation, bearing psychic fissures in a maelstrom of societal neglect

Sanity flickers like a tenuous candle amidst tempestuous chaos, innocence obliterated, leaving us adrift in ruination

Yeah, we dwell in a nightmarish reverie, the borders between dream and atrocity irrevocably blurred

Clutching at ephemeral hope, yet it evaporates faster than comprehension in the labyrinth of despair

Still, I persist, gripping life’s slender filament, defying the oppressive darkness that seeks to engulf us

For even in the most tenebrous abysses, a solitary spark of illumination endures, a flicker resolute and unyielding

To the lost and broken, we rise

The world’s messed up, but hearts survive

Through chaos, we hold on