I’m sorting through all my old email. Found something interesting and (for the internet) very very old — both it and the quote/title of the post date from back in my heady days of online gaming — I don’t remember the origin of either:

I hear their voices from time to time
no rhythm, no rhyme
just a mess
of mindlessness.

Empty text carrying no more wit
no more decency than a gnat.

I try to drown them out
I try to sing, to shout
hold back from verbal violence
from an endless dirge of vengeance
but here we are again:

looking at each other through the twisted panes of glass
stained with my prejudice
bloodied by my convictions
broken by the foolish notion
that the souls that we show in a world of ascii glory
are more than words in a pointless, plotless story.

But I know.

I’m sure I can’t endure another moment
dreaming dreams
thinking thoughts
of all the things for which I’ve fought.

I’m left cold
I was bold
once,
long ago, when the words were still fresh on disks
the 1’s and 0’s ringing with bliss
that the hearing world could never hold.

I tapped out many things
songs I’d never sing
I wrote places men would find,
one day leave behind
for a new place… with a bigger treasure trove.

(They go back from time to time;
revisit every crime
but isn’t it funny how they
never grow?
Don’t they know?)

Their souls may seem like nothing in this world of abc’s,
123’s
but really… that’s all there ever was.

They don’t understand, but they’re not bad
or evil
or aligned.
Not clerics
or theives
or warriors.

They’re just people.

Typing 100 words a minute,
thinking at 25.