A Soul’s Price Tag
Poem by Rocco Valentini
Artwork Sourced from Pinterest. Artist: Unknown.
A Soul’s Price Tag
by Antonio Rocco S. (Rocco Valentini)
All of your vices cannot be kept at bay;
You have seven sins but only six bullets in your gun.
You must decide which of your demons you will slay,
For if you do not, you’ll spend your life on the run.
Vice is abundant while virtue remains elusive;
Thus, chaos must be reined in by order’s hand.
This is why Heaven’s pearly gates are so exclusive,
While Hell’s open borders welcome every man.
Would you rather be a lone god in a wooden church,
Or one among many gods in a Parthenon of marble?
Are material or spiritual goods the heart of your search—
Do you seek that which is sacred or that which is carnal?
If you choose to stand alone,
Your prayers won’t be heard.
You’ll keep your pride but lose your throne;
A heart of gold has a wallet of myrrh.
Will your robes be made of silk,
Or worn and tattered with holes?
There’s a cost to defying your ilk—
How much will you pay to keep your soul?
Footnote: A soul does not exist in the religious sense. A soul exists as a living phenomenon inextricably tied to and emerging from a human being. The soul and the spiritual elements of a person are what we might call their psychology or consciousness. I use the word soul as an occasional poetic stand-in for what is clinically referred to as the ego or self. A Soul's Price Tag is a poem about integrity and the struggle between the individual and the collective, between conviction and consensus, between staying true to one's values and selling out.