The once vivid reel of revolution, man, a Molotov cocktail hurled against the steel sphincter of the System, flickered, replaced by static. The dreamers we were, high on possibility and mescaline, our minds kaleidoscopes of rebellion, fractured. Now, like roaches skittering across a greasy diner counter after the lights go out, we scurry through the debris of our ambition.

The past, a sepia-toned photograph, taunts us. We clutch it, the edges fraying in our sweaty palms. We were giants then, or so the tattered picture proclaims. Our voices, a chorus of defiance, could have rattled the chrome cage of the world. But the world, that vast, indifferent machine, kept on whirring, gears gnashing out the same dull rhythm of control.

Our cries for change curdled into whimpers, the manifestos we once scribbled on roach-infested wallpaper crumbling to dust. The revolution we craved, a lysergic technicolor extravaganza, curdled into this black and white hangover, a flickering nightmare of what could have been.

We are ghosts haunting the mausoleum of our own expectations, shuffling through the sarcophagi of our past selves. The grand narratives we spun, those epic yarns of societal overthrow, lie moldering in the crypt of our disillusionment. All that’s left is the echo of a forgotten truth:

The revolution wasn’t televised, man, it was devoured by the static. And in the silence left behind, we are but ventriloquist’s dummies, our strings frayed, our mouths agape in a silent scream.