I crave eye contact
Because at least I know if you lie
You lie to my face

Look at me
Answer me
Let me know I'm alive

I want to know which of us is dead
Is it both?
When do we depart?
Your world and mine

Neither of us knows how to be free

Every year visits to grandparents occur,
And the grandkids have “grown so much,”
And they need to “put bricks on their heads”.
Every year the family is updated about
The sports and the activities,
The good dates and the not-so-good dates
Of the previous year,
The births and baptisms,
The deaths and funerals.
Every year we endure the
Sometimes awkward, always long conversations
With the friends we see just once a year,
Maybe less, and every year we seem
To get further and further apart,
And the conversations are shorter,
Maybe even just a “Hey”, and you
Wonder why we can’t talk to these people anymore.
Why do people so close to us in heart become
So much more hard to communicate with in person?
Is it technology, fooling us into thinking
That we are connected to each other, when really
We don’t know each other at all?
Is it time, slowly eroding our years of
Memories and similarities, leaving us
Longing for the “good old days” instead
Of embracing the new ones?
Is the problem simply us;
Are we not willing to create new memories,
Go through the stresses of trying to forge
A new relationship when distance
Becomes an issue?
Maybe that is the problem.
Yet no one is willing to fix it,
So every year is the same.
I’ll probably be writing a poem about this
Next year.

we live in times
that make it difficult
to differentiate reality from fiction

     not in the field of literature
     where borders always have been fluid

but in quotidian discourses
of politicians  television  internet
speakers present unproven attitudes
as if they were reality unquestionable

and they get huffy and evasive
if proof comes out that they are wrong
they claim that they have been misquoted
or at least misunderstood

and even if they do recant
this never hits the front page of the medium
but somewhere inside mixed with trivialities
few people check

so it seems to be up to every one of us
to use our brains and bother
whether the data we are being served
are edible or rotten

bccause these speakers
seem to have forgotten
what communication is about

we need to really understand each other

windows in train cars
full of grime and stray fingerprints
we exchange glances
via our reflections
distorted through glass
and our own warped perceptions
of those around us

no words are spoken
the silence revered

we exist in bubbles;
no, not bubbles
we are trees
we whisper quietly
words of no meaning
and we reach so silently
for each other
but cannot move