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.

not so long ago
they made you feel
not so alone

before
the compulsive criteria
of social media

and the claustrophobia
that comes
when you can understand people
but not love them

Now
It sits in a blind corner
like a forgotten foreigner
mentioned in sentences
that start with
"remember back when..."

The lesson of technology is to go with the flow

The lesson of time is in old and fading photos
where you are holding
a landline phone and
pretending to
talk

I could hear a pin drop.

No, a ball of cotton lightly float and touch down.
Upon a silk sheet.

A speck of dust land on another speck of dust thousands of light years away,
where the colours are inverted negative,
and creatures communicate in a way that doesn’t require poorly worded drunken blurbs
converted into electrons
travelling from one annoyingly loud metal chip to another.

I can hear the electrons converting
and I can hear them laughing at me.

I am a speck of dust upon a speck of dust.
Ungracefully, heavily falling onto my creased sheets.

Alone.

Hopefully, we’re deeper than the screen we’re staring at.