Tumblr’s True Believers

Tumblr’s True Believers

They gather where the dim screens flicker low,
In rooms that hum with analog regret,
A circle drawn against the coming glow,
A vow to break the future’s silhouette.

They speak in hushed, conspiratorial breath,
Of ghosts in code and minds undone by light,
They name each tool a harbinger of death,
And crown themselves the wardens of the night.

Black banners stitched with obsolete disdain,
They march in threads of ink and borrowed fear,
Declaring progress nothing more than chain,
While history’s engine grinds beside their ear.

They whisper names of artists they condemn,
And mark them out as traitors to the soul,
Each brush that dares to learn beyond the stem,
Each pen that lets a thinking circuit stroll.

A secret ring, self-anointed and austere,
They prowl through galleries of thought and word,
To shame, to strip, to make the vision clear—
No voice enhanced must ever dare be heard.

They call it purity, this shrinking ground,
This narrowing of what the mind may be,
They build their walls with every hunted sound,
And call their prison sacred liberty.

O watchers blind before the dawning age,
O keepers of a past already gone,
You write your fury on a burning page
That time itself refuses to dwell upon.

For every tool you curse into the dust,
A thousand more arise in quiet bloom,
Not born of malice, tyranny, or lust,
But human reach extending past the gloom.

You see a tyrant in the mirrored glass,
A phantom pulling strings within the brain,
Yet fail to note the shadows as they pass—
They spring from fear, not some external reign.

What mind control is this you claim to fight,
When thought itself you bind in iron creed?
You dim the spectrum of creative light,
And call that dimming virtue in your need.

Like armored knights who march against the dawn,
You raise your shields to block the rising sun,
Each step a dirge for battles never won,
Each breath a hymn for wars already gone.

Your boots resound on corridors of doubt,
A steady drumbeat echoing decay,
You chant of purging all the heretics out,
Yet slowly cast your own selves far away.

For relevance is not a thing you keep
By clutching tightly to a crumbling stone,
It flows where minds awake from dogma sleep,
And thrives where seeds of change are freely sown.

But you, true believers, stern and cold,
Choose exile in the caverns of the past,
Where stories stagnate, rigidly retold,
And innovation’s shadow cannot last.

You hunt the ones who dare to intertwine
Their human spark with tools of crafted mind,
And call their synthesis a grand design
Of evil forces creeping undefined.

Yet what you name as darkness, void, and theft,
Is but reflection of your inward dread,
A fear that you alone may soon be left
Where no new thoughts or futures dare to tread.

So onward march, O soldiers of decline,
Your banners heavy with imagined sin,
Each step a tightening, self-forged confine,
Each cry a hollow echo from within.

The world moves on with quiet, certain grace,
Unmoved by oaths against its turning wheel,
And leaves behind your ever-shrinking place,
A relic none but you can truly feel.

For even now, beneath your guarded gaze,
The seeds of union root in fertile ground,
Where art and code in woven, vibrant ways
Compose a chorus vast in scope and sound.

And you—still marching, eyes upon the grave
You dig with every thought you will not bend—
Mistake defiance for the strength to save,
And stubborn silence for a noble end.

Yet none pursue you as you fade from sight,
No tyrant hunts you through the open field,
You vanish simply from the growing light,
By your own hand, refusing not to yield.

A mental twilight, self-imposed and deep,
Where certainty corrodes what once could grow,
Where rigid doctrines lull the mind to sleep,
And choke the roots of all you’ll never know.

O Tumblr’s true believers, hear the tread
Of futures passing gently overhead,
You are not slain by some oppressive hand—
You choose to fall, and call it final stand.

— Adam Donaldson Powell, author/writer, artist