I sense loss and yearning all around
I used to chalk it up as a personal hurdle to jump
or just the feeling of aging while the youth still goes on
Yet I think I this malaise is widespread
Impacting all of us in our glitching global trade

I used to think the issue was there’s just too much now
Too much to watch, listen, and taste
You don’t need the hunt anymore
Don’t need to wait or pay some exorbitant price
I used to feel overstimulated by the streams
and just could not decide
I still feel, it’s not that we want to do the thing,
but we yearn to want to want to do the thing
again

Is that all that’s changed?
Those who are not ready to be creators
will certainly not be ready to be curators
Freed ourselves from DJs and TV programming
but what control have we flailed ourselves into?
Wasting hours a day watching 30 second videos
whose categories are heavily curated
impersonally, just for you
Remember when user preferences worked
and in searches they wouldn’t hide the whole list
of all that was relevant and new?

I don’t play my mandolin everyday anymore,
let alone my guitar or tin whistles
I can’t let this die
I listened to 7 year old Japanese math rock
and want just a speck of that
An identity where I can sift right through
all this mediocre destruction all around
No one even has the gall to admit they’re killing
or the decency to even cover it up anymore
They videotape themselves dancing and
murdering kids for lebensraum
then turn around and say “no we’re not”

I’m tired of surface level house maintenance
followed by immobile phone scrolls
I’m looking for that lesson we’ll all learn
after finally going too far
I won’t play the victim or the hero no more
I did my part and now I’m too old
I need deeper art to escape samsara for good
and maybe that’s the best I can do comrades

I’m sick of details grown so scattered and thin
My whole past feels like entrails
smeared across vast desserts
There used to be rainforests here
but now it’s hard to find the pictures

Just when things almost get too competent and nice
they let decadence do its worse
out of fear that the improvements would make goods and services
too cheap not to be free
Socialism’s bad for business owners
so we lay off the workers and overcharge even more
Let the octogenarian billionaires buy up more water and air
to keep the fellas in the favelas gnashing and grim

Bunker complexes, spaceships, missiles coated in spent uranium;
these are all more important than starving children
Why do the poor keep having poor kids?
Still a conundrum
We gave them a chance to compete
some ephemeral time ago and they blew it
What can we do?
We tried to teach a man to fish…
Imagine Jesus Christ just giving folks fish and bread
for nothing in return?

In realms of cyberspace, I fly
searching out treasures in disguise
skirting advertised merchandise
the ordinary, the overemphasized
to anatomize the marginalized
values overlooked otherwise
on the dusty, neglected, virtual aisles
of small sites not over-commercialized
or google ranked and over-publicized
some unexpected payoffs materialize
glittering swag, patiences prize
“Oh, my God - Look!” I vocalize
My girlfriends can’t believe their eyes
“You can find anything,” they surmise.

As information is sourced, we knowledge add.
Entertainment is accessed by each ipad.
The cost of research is by the net reduced,
whilst addiction to **** is by it induced.

Banking transactions are by it made easy,
so does the convenience of a shopping spree.
We conveniently send mails by speed of light,
and connect to old buddies beyond our sight.

Its flash of lightening promotes the breaking news,
so does its ill wind the fake ones for our views.
It mocks distance with commercial activities,
and lures perverts to their ****** proclivities.

It does our world flatten with mobile services,
its not by distance hindered for con men's vices,
neither will it the distant swindled protect.
It does the deeds of distant bullies perfect.

Transnational love has by it been produced,
when love birds electronically are introduced.
Global link that binds us all like a cobweb;
Old and young alike, each enslaved by the web.

I see strangers on the Internet
talk about healing their inner child.
It made me go inward.
Think
and think
and think.

About little me.
Three, five, seven years old.
What she wore
what she ate
what she watched on TV.

How she danced,
twirled on and on
without a care in the world.

And as I saw her in my mind's eye
and felt her in my soul,
my heart was filled with a Great and Terrible Sadness.

Oh, how I've failed her!
I've abandoned her laugh
her warmth
her light.

I traded her valiance for fear,
her voice for silence.
Her smile and bright green eyes
for a dull film over too-pale features.

Oh, my poor, sweet child.
I am endlessly sorry.
I have failed you.
Failed you.
Failed you.

Those strangers on the Internet
want to heal their inner child.

But now
I wonder...
Can my inner child heal me?

please-please   add your waxy scrolls
   truths   to the panic pyre
madden   an inflamed swarm of intelligence
worm warrens    into the collective of our brain
maybe
   having been riddled
      it'll collapse under the corrective strain
      and start blinking a genuine signal
process recognized    compassionate inkling

An app for this
An app for that
An app even,
To feed your cat.

Mesmerised by mobiles
All these zombies shuffle along
Nearly getting run over
So internet throng.

Scanning with their debit cards
No time for cash
But I don’t trust these things
With their laser flash.

All this social media
Where is it going?
So much information
Toing and froing.

Good to keep in touch
And so easy to Google
Want to make a noise?
It’s better than a bugle.

Better check in on Facebook
So you all know where I am
Time to check my emails
To bin the latest scam.

But whatever happened to talking?
It’s now a forgotten art!
The cyber revolution:
This is just the start.

Paul Butters

© PB 19\3\22.

(a billet-doux to HP)

4 minutes til (virtual) class
“Dang”, I think. I need to post today's poem!
I paste the poem, the title, the tags.
I have the sense that once the page says “saving draft” I’m *******.
So I quickly press save.. and..
502 bad gateway
“Argh,” I say under my breath, glancing at my clock.
I press refresh.
Do you want to submit the form?
Of **** course I want to resubmit - I press submit.. and..
502 bad gateway
“Oh my f-king GOD!” I yell at my iPad
I press refresh.
Do you want to resubmit?
Yes, yes, YES- I resubmit, I submit, I supplicate, I grovel.. and..
502 bad gateway
2 minutes
I scream a line of obscenity that would **** the Pope if he were here.
I refresh
One of my roommates inquired, “Are you ok?” from her room.
I resubmit and.. and.. and..
“Yes!” I yell, to reassure my roommate, “Website issues,”
it finally, finally posts.
A “Whoom” sound announces the start of my virtual class.