Our land of stars and stripes, now glows,
with screens that flicker in hallowed halls.
Entranced humans shuffle, with eyes fixed below,
on small gadgets that have us enthralled.

Should the Statue of Liberty, our symbolic girl,
be holding a smartphone up to the world?
While tweets fly like eagles and hashtags swirl,
foreign disinformation trends as fast as it’s purled.

In lunch halls, real conversations take rest,
as influence is sought—in hoity-toity, binary quest.
Friends are backdrops—originality in short supply
as likes and shares make our dopamine fly.

America’s zombies, though ******* drained,
shuffle endlessly on, with Wi-Fi stimulated brains.
Once the land of the free, we’re now the land of tech
with minds wrecked by truths unchecked.

As we rock and sway—the new robot way—
will our old, analog-republic simply fade away?
.
.
Songs for this:
Airhead by Thomas Dolby
.
Oh, and a Christmas playlist because—it’s December!:
https://daweb.us/xmas/Christmas_01.mp3

My heart was torn in two
And I still ******* miss you
Lied to me through and through,
Yet I still ******* miss you

To hear your voice once again
To hold your hand
To hug and draw in your sweet scent
The fact of the matter is; I ******* miss you

I wanted good for us all
To succeed, not fall
The family I shaped
Now feels empty as you left your place

I make an extra plate
Just in case you come home
You don't have to be alone!
I ******* miss you...

He speaks in a tongue of bullets,
each syllable a wound,
each pause the weight of mourning.
I try to answer with flowers,
petals soft as whispers,
but my adjectives scatter,
like frightened birds
against the howl of his war-torn winds.

Winter comes,
its gray breath thick with frost.
Promises shatter underfoot,
crunching like brittle leaves.
I hold onto hope—
a child clutching a kite
in a storm,
the string slipping but never severed.

He is a soldier of certainty,
his love rationed like bread
in a famine of trust.
Even in suffering, he builds walls,
his hands steady,
his heart a fortress of precise control.
I batter myself against his gates,
******-knuckled with devotion,
as if my persistence
could melt the iron.

What is the word for a love
that exists in fragments?
A fossil of a future
we were never meant to share?
I name it exile.
I name it prayer.
And I name it the ghost
of a white whale,
forever hunted,
forever out of reach.

Lying on the bed
My friend sound asleep on the other side
And her cat that runs away from family comes
And lays next to me
Rubbing against me
Asking me to pet her

It makes me feel okay
It makes me feel home

Everything
Is at least
A little bit better

I'm telling you
Cats always know

This turkey pardon is nonsense,
Clearly symbolic.
But people seem to
No longer grasp the extent
To which that symbolism goes.
The gobblers which we free,
Where do they go?
To live out their lives in solitude
On a quiet reserve.
The rest?
Well, we just put them to death
Enshrined in a yearly ritual slaughter.
Nothing like that situation of the natives
When we boil off all the water..

And you may say,
"You think of it too much,
Sign to it too much importance."
But I say you think too little
And too small.
You think of all the easements
As entitlements
And not ones which we took
Through invasion and subjugation.