We watch our mobiles and our tellies,
TV on the internet,
Internet on the TV,
On the mobile.

Our lives are spent
Immersed in soaps
And reality TV.
Hours and hours
Of subsidised sport
And fake news.

Daily quizzes
And Jeremy Kyle
To keep us occupied
And Boredom at bay.

Like zombies we stare at our mobiles
Almost colliding
With people on the street.
Oh yes we chat
And message and text
With folk we’ve never met
Presuming they are real.

We play out time,
Betting and scheming:
Fantasy Leagues
And Facebook,
Snapchat and God knows what.

Occupying our addictive minds
Until the Grim Reaper comes.
“Comfortably numb” until the end.

Paul Butters

8\9\2018.

Living among strangers,
Around the next corner, danger.
A flower and weeds, somehow coexisting,
But the roots are twisting around me,
Coils in the soil threaten to ****,
We don’t know what’s happening,
Our eyes not to the sky, blind.
Not being able to see the kind things in life.
Void of your death by asphyxiation,
Permanent destination.

Everyone on the street are deep in their phones,
Walking alone,
Their mind not at home,
The touch screens make humanity,
Lose touch with themselves,
Oh the irony
While social media does the opposite of connect,
We don’t give respect anymore,
A negative effect,
Where we could care less,
Until being on the edge of death,
Your last breath.

When will we pick our heads up?
When will it click that there’s more to life,
That our clock is ticking,
And we need to quick realize,
That we need to live in the now.

Thinking that ancient Egyptian
made the great pyramid
is numerically imperfect.

I sit at home thinking of life,
On the absurdities and all the strife,
Caught in a world that yearns
For beings to explore it.

How we’ve all grown addicted,
As no one could’ve predicted,
To our own little "ideal" worlds
That rest neatly in the palm of our hands.

We cry and complain,
How things don’t remain,
Just way the way we want
When we point our heads to the sky.

Away from our own little worlds,

We see grandiosity unthought of.
We see war, famine, disagreements, heartbreaks, rejection, and loss.
We stare for but a moment taking it in as our minds collapse in the straw houses we created.
And then just like that, we shun all that we see,
And look back down to that glowing screen and start to rebuild.

Not with something stronger, no.

With that same old material so readily available, to those who refuse to learn.
To those who refuse to face the reality of life.
To those who prefer hearing their own ideas on rerun.
To those who care more about having the appearance of a happiness than to actually achieve it.
To those who care more about likes and comments, pictures and videos, than meeting others.
We sit there smiling at that device that eats away at our growth, our character, and our resolve.

And in our haste to prevent ourselves from acknowledging hardships, we miss something.
In that infinite space away from our "ideal" worlds, exists the other half we no longer see.
The happiness, bonds, trust, friendships, kindness, and love.
The people that want to strike up a conversation, form relationships.
The people who desire an emotional bond, rather than a visual one.
We imitate this, attempt to recreate it, in our fictionalized lives, not realizing how much better the real thing would be.

If only we would look up to the sky.

My synthetic sleep catching up with me.
In the darkest hour
all my past and future selves collect into one.
Falling apart.
Piece by piece.
This artificial world, what ever happened to you?
This insomniac world that never goes to sleep.
How did we get here?
Disconnected people polluting the hallow veins of earth.
We think we are free but we are caged in by our highly technologicaly advanced smart phones.
Through out the existence of mankind we have sought to create tools which would further our abilitys to live easier lives but now we have surrendered to our own creation.
Have we become subjected to empty shells or is there still hope?
Somewhere out there is a future world surging with infinite peace.

Days and nights at home alone
Swiping left and right
Tiny movements seeking love
A quest for someone right

Profiles pass before their eyes
One stands from the batch
Buzz and flash goes the phone
Tinder, it’s a match!

A chat ensues so they court
To find rapport is great
Best to strike whilst irons hot
And so arrange a date

To meet and greet by the sea
For coffee and a stroll
First impressions made are good
Seems they’re on a roll

Finding common ground they laugh
And think themselves hilarious
Keen for more, dates arranged
This one could be serious

And then it starts to blossom
The months ahead are booked
These two people fall in love
Now for life they’re hooked

What a wondrous thing this app
Without it meet they’d never
Parallel lives yet hadn’t crossed
It brought these souls together

There’s no need to go to bars
Or parade upon a stage
Stay at home with phone and swipe
It’s dating modern age

It served them well this app of love
Used wisely there’s no folly
Happily into sunset they ride
That’s how Brian met Holly

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.