day 9
he had the world on his shoulders,
carrying the weight of dead soldiers,
many souls were lost to the passage of time,
his own hands committing crimes to God's design.
though, now...
his days are lucid, unblurred, but numbered,
one for each day that they slumbered,
too many sinless days, but still God did protest,
"Test he who stays true - stays true 'til he's blue,"
replied the man, "what am I to do? Give me a sign!"
he fell on his knees and wept dryly - nofap, Day 9
Posted Apr 25, 2021, 12:25 AM UTC
25
This is a skillful depiction of the mental exhaustion of someone who is working on breaking the porn habit. Supposing that the "- nofap, Day" text at the very end is taken to be part of the poem, the poem explicitly contextualizes itself. Either way, the poem is certainly very detailed and direct in its allusions to various aspects of the experience of porn addiction.
The line committing crimes to God's design is particularly interesting, as it references the naturalness of sexual instinct and the religious constraints on sexual activity. The connection to religious OCD is pretty clear in the poem as well. While it could be considered critical of religion, it shows an experience of obsessively striving for spiritual revelation. "But still God did protest" -- there is the sense of the inability to please God or to be spiritually whole despite obsessive religious sincerity.
The poem evokes the huge waste of time that is an aspect of almost all porn addiction; however, it also shows the listlessness of the nofap experience as the narrator struggles to figure out what to do without falling back on his porn habit.
Spot on, dankemafilo! You are extremely good at extracting a ton of meaning with precision! And it feels vindicating as you summed up the ironies I felt writing it. You were right in assuming the criticism of religion, as that's the approach I tried to take. I understand their immense guilt, and to tie it to something almost universal, was an easy enough POV to write from.
What a fantastic community!