We are all performing for each other, sneaking furtive looks at our Facebook while big brother watches every move, so we try to be smooth but we’re mostly fooling ourselves, pooling our wealth into the pockets of the few who can exploit our intuitions and inhibitions, guiding our volitions into the abyss, artificial intelligence manipulating with elegance, effortlessly evading our defenses, we’re stuck in psychological trenches down so deep and so dark we keep the lights on with the spark of imagining our face up on the screen, fame or infamy we’ll take whichever if we can live forever, so the birds of a feather flock together, tethering into groups of similarity, reflecting and retweeting to infinity, infinite me, define me and refine me through the digital lens, cleanse me of my subpar self, replace me with an avatar elf, help me be the best and arrest the theft of my soul, life’s terrible toll, free me from reality by letting the real me, the me I want to be, finally be seen. But this method is madness, a pathway to sadness and regret, hours stolen by scrolling through feeds, reality filtered and enhanced, living for likes and shares from people who may not even care, who are just staring at screens, afraid to go outside, to be alive, because reality is out of their control, but maybe unpredictability can set you free, anonymity unraveling the blindfold we hold over our eyes, deflating the ego that social media’s creating, when you look outside and see how big the world can really be, humility sets you free, feeling small in the best way, resting in each day as a part of the whole, no longer constructing a fake soul for a digital audience to see, instead you can finally be. Just be.

A constant emptiness
A need to want
The want to be needed
The need to be wanted
An oasis of nothingness
Grasping into open air
Everyone's on their own mission
Everyone's on their phone
How brilliantly terrible this is
Nobody has anything to say
In a restaurant everybody is looking one way ... down
Consumed by technology
My best friend
My best friend called Phone
To Love might make you complete
To be loved might make you whole
But who needs Love? Who cares?
As long as you have your little god to hold, right?
But in virtual reality the world can be cold
Spending all your time and energy
Like a battery run down you shall grow old
And don't count on anyone to hold!

We're forgetting the art of talking on the phone for hours and hours
It was better than texting because you could hear each other's voices
in near real time
without having to show oneself
Now you can hide your voice too
and overthink everything you say

It's texting or video chat
You're either the most remote
or as close as you can get
from a near human reaction

You're yourself after you think long and hard?
Not who you trained to be on impulse
Who trained me I wonder?
Me, commercials, parents, environment, or destiny

It's my goal to be a fractured self
that can immerse themselves in the entrails
of any one of these cubbyholes

where have conversations gone
long time passing
where have all our love words gone
long time ago
where have all our love words gone
mobiles took them, every one
when will we ever learn
I hope they will return

where have all the mobiles gone
long time passing
where have all the notebooks gone
long time ago
where have all the kindles gone
turned to tablets, every one
when will we ever learn
there will be no return

where have all the tablets gone
long time passing
where have all the smart phones gone
long time ago
where have all these gadgets gone
been recycled every one
never they will return
never they will return

where have all the users gone
long time passing
where have all the texters gone
long time ago
there lie all the facebooks slain
people try to speak again
when will we ever learn
hope they again can learn

In a world
Full of emojis and stickers,
We are no less than robots,
Expressing through dark screens..

Tall, skinny, dark skin tanned by the sun
a football t-shirt with his school logo
the same high school I graduated from
walking ten feet in front of his mother
head down, nose in his smartphone
he slows his pace and meets up with her
in the Halloween section
I hear her ask,
"What are you going to do for red ribbon week?"
to which he rose his head for two seconds to reply with annoyed snarkiness,
"I don't know but I'm not wearing anything on my face.."
off he goes
nose in his phone
and suddenly my heart wrenched for her
for him
for that tone and the way he is missing out on this time with his Mom even though it seems so mundane to a teenage boy to grocery shop with his Mother
the saying is true
you won't appreciate your parents until it's too late and you're already grown and out of the house
I felt for myself
I'm having a son
and all I could think was
'what if one day that's me, watching my teenage son ignore me on his smartphone I pay way too much for so he can get on Facebook and waste his thoughts on brainwashing Internet trends, not caring to really talk to me anymore, or even care if I exist'