My Soul

from Resurrection by swampmessiah

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lyrics

My soul went missing about three years ago. I don’t know how or why or exactly when. Maybe it had been gone for years, or even for decades. Maybe I let it out one beautiful spring morning and forgot to call it in. Maybe I lost it during puberty. Maybe it was afraid of falling in love and slunk away when I found someone to give my soul to. All I know is, one day I came home from work and realized I didn’t have a soul—that was about three years ago. Maybe it had died of boredom.
This spring I found it caged by fence, like a criminal or animal that’s wandered into town. It had withered to nothing more than a husk with gray-green blemishes of mold spotting its yellowed skin—more pathetic than frightful. All the juices had evaporated over the winter, all the sweet pulp, so the deflective hide was buckling in on itself, lacking all substance. Not even a rattle of seeds for renewal: just a moldering husk trapped and helpless.…No wonder I recognized it.
You would think a soulless person would rejoice at recovering even this decrepit morsel; the way modern people cling to everything, you would think a soul would be more valuable than a lost toy or a dog from childhood. I was unmoved, perhaps because I lack a soul. I felt no nostalgia, no compassion, no yearning: merely recognition.
I left it there. Even the birds won’t touch it.

credits

from Resurrection, released September 28, 2022

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about

swampmessiah Saint Paul, Minnesota

I was born in Duluth, Minnesota in 1957. I've been drawing all my life and painting since about 1975; I started writing poetry and rants in, maybe, 1976; since 1996 I've been recording those poems and rants, usually with a "musical" backing.
I live in Saint Paul, Minnesota. My partner and I have two children. I have a day job that is in no way artistic. ... more