My Soul is a Record Player that Only Plays Despair

by Kakera   Jan 23, 2020


Sometimes it feels like my soul is a record player.
Not some fancy state-of-the-art machinery
that has taken sound engineering into the direction
of being a work of art that plays works of art, though.

I mean the scrappy pile of junk-kind.
The sort you'd find in an old diner
that moonlights as a drug store
and likes to pretend it's a halfway house
run by Good Samaritans.

The kind that only plays music
that decent folk would merrily
pay top dollars just to avoid hearing.

The kind that plays background music
to the dealings of merchants of death
and a despair formed from the human condition.

Ýeah. The only music my soul emits outward these days
are songs of existential dread and bitter disillusionment.
Songs of suicidal tendencies and emotional violence;
songs like non-stop nightmares and exhaustion with living.

I guess it makes sense that I stay silent most of the time now.

    report violation
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Latest Comments

  • 4 years ago

    by Star

    Judging Comment:
    The metaphor here works so well, because the feeling has been conveyed.
    A record player so old and dusty, perhaps scratches every record it plays, unintentionally. The record player that forgot what beautiful music sounds like, and everything played seems broken. The description is very sad. The music the record player plays, the songs and the powerful ending line.
    Very well written.
    I hope writing and sharing this poem, made you feel better at least for a short moment.

  • 4 years ago

    by Poet on the Piano

    I have missed your poetry, I know it's been a few months and I'm so glad to see that you've shared two new pieces, though the content is heavy... I hope in some way it proves an outlet or a recognition of this despair. You have all my support.

    I nominated this one because it struck me the most - the metaphor is not one I'd ever heard before, and I liked the antiquity and oddities of a record player (since I feel it is overlooked by many as they'd rather have something more portable, and not everyone appreciates the richness of listening to music this way). You have such a raw voice in this, but narrated in such an eloquent way.

    I loved your repetition of "the kind" and describing it as your soul bearing such sorrows that probably makes other people uncomfortable, because it's not "polished" or filled with touches of hope. Sometimes, what we feel is dark and dreadful and we can't always change that. It's not pretty. It's not what others want to hear, because it's pain itself. And people tend to shy away from others' pain because it may not be convenient for them.

    That last line was heart-breaking, yet screams to me that need to be heard, no matter what your soul plays.

    <3

    • 4 years ago

      by Kakera

      Thanks for the very indepth comment hun, I think I needed that today - to know that someone has read one of my poems and liked it in a way that affected them. When writing the metaphor and the title, I guess the core idea of this poem is that my soul reminds me of those jukeboxes at diners that should've been closed down forcibly 40 years ago, and the jukebox itself is from 50 years ago with music that was bad back then too and simply had no place left in the world fifty years later.

      I started to feel that if my soul was like those jukeboxes, it's no wonder I'm too consumed with despair to do anything other than want to die all the time.

      That said, surprised you nominated this one out of the two I wrote this week, thought you would be more drawn to the other one but maybe it's too esoteric, referencing things like heterodox salvation sects in China and stuff.

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