(Hive Wired)

As wires round the world get lighter and thinner
the autoscroll feeds you fourty-nine homicides
from desktops at noon to plasma at dinner
the auto-cue commits sixty-five more crimes.

Mad and red in the face, you picture yourself
pace by pace, walking the span of the kitchen
but the network fail to mention the other seven billion
who kept living their life devoid of such sinning.

Typhoonous winds and hurricane fever
head out the window, yell for your kingdom,
yell so we hear you ’til you’re hoarse and unkempt.
yell 'til your sad old neighbour get’s hell bent.

Step back to the desk and slam on your keyboard
tell all that you know that there’s more to life
than watching the ’strife of idiocy’ part two thousand
and something, there’s more to this world

than serving a system; there’s more to a system
than the buds at the top, the roots don’t need trimming
the buds must be stopped from dying and rotting
and killing the crop. Still glum? Relax in your favourite shop!

With a roof overhead and your screen polished down
forget the anger, the strife, and fantasist who yelled.
tip-tap the day away, earn and pay away that frown
forget how lonely you are and buy some new health.

Tip-tap-a-tip-tap-a-tip-tap away the evening and next day
Now you live vicariously through social media
you cannot stop networking, lonelier… lonelier.
Connections you make get quicker, and quicker.

You pick and you carve a residual image.
‘Life is the greatest’ on appearance
the best fools fool themselves, it’s addictive
post after post you build up a rhythm.

Second life, third face, prosodical features:
hive mind rewired you’re speechlessly grinning
Staring at screens you’re now silent at dinner,
your diary entries get sparser and sparser

you forget appearances are a farcical demeanour
sixth chord diminutive, false life fever: your square
-eyed and ill groomed head sits on a hunchback miser,
the hive mind keeps ticking you keep getting wiser.