Erysichthon of Thessaly

 Surrounded by creatures,
Starving,
Yet never able to be filled
No matter how much they consume...
It's an age old condition
Etched into human mythology...
So many stories
Of the wretch
That no matter how much they eat
Can never be satiated...
The god of hunger
Lives
In too many of us even now...
Especially now...
This "modern" world
Of technological dependency...
From the upper echelon
To the unwashed masses,
In every socioeconomic level...
People living
With an emptiness inside them...
The ghost in the shell is absent...
They are only the shell...
Tropisms and instinct...
The constant search for 
Baser need fulfillment
Without any understanding
Of what those baser needs are...
Maslow weeps...
And they never ascend
To the apex,
Self-actualization,
Since their true self
Has been mostly destroyed
Since childhood...
Absent...
No relationship
Will fill the spaces inside...
No amount of substances
Will numb their agony
Enough,
And yet they gorge themselves
On these attempts to numb the pain...
Of course,
This exacerbates the cause of the hunger...
Eventually,
Even the physical structures
Of the brain
Change...
Metamorphosize 
To represent this lack of heart...
Lack of soul...
That dog-eat-dog
Capitalistic attitude
That any human connection 
Is nothing more than
Currency...
A tool to obtain
What it is
They are starving for...
So often killing
Who it is
They are draining of life force...
Polluting 
Every source of sustenance
Due to their fear-based greed...
And then moving on to the next...
The human race,
Overall,
Taken as one entity,
Is often brilliant,
But often self-interested
And destructive to extremes...
Short-sighted...
Focused on wants vs. needs...
Consuming itself in its race towards self-destruction...
Kronos eating his own children...
Fear at the center of every decision...
The all-powerful "Me" 
The focal point  of their easily distracted attention...