Ah, godless saviors!
They have sold the soul
and now prescribe salvation.
Whoever does not know
what he himself wants
now dares
to guide another.
They speak of suffering—
yet their suffering
is the loss
of clients.
They preach self-knowledge
without ever
having smelled
their own depths.
Ah—
what a carnival
they have built
out of human anxiety
and meaninglessness.
They manufacture illness
to sell the cure.
They scatter fear
to deliver hope.
They call it
motivation—
yet it is nothing
but the daily injection
of ignorance
into the restless veins
of mankind.
If only they deceived others—
but they too
are deceived.
For whoever believes
himself saved
is already lost
in the deepest confusion.
They do not say:
Think.
They say:
Repeat.
And from every worn-out word
they forge a slogan:
Believe!
Let go!
Be yourself!
Yet they do not know
that the self
is not something
you become—
it is something
you lose
moment
after moment.
I have seen it:
In their eyes
there is no light—
only the reflection
of a phone screen.
In their voices
there is no wisdom—
only the recorded voice
of another.
In their hearts
there is no love—
only the hunger
for more followers.
Ah, life coaches—
priests
of a churchless age,
those who,
in the absence of God,
sit in His place,
and in the absence
of meaning
sell prescriptions
for success.
To them I say:
Step down
from the pulpit.
There is no truth
in your sessions—
only the fear
of meaninglessness.
And there is no light
in your eyes—
only the reflection
of a ring light.
From Poems of Madness