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.

We snap a shameless selfie
And post at once online.
Me and wifey smiling sweet
Whilst we play or dine!

Now some say it quite conceited
To paste one's mugs so much.
But we know its really just
More modernly in touch.

It took a bit to email,
And then to switch to text -
Now it's all on Facebook.
Who knows what will be next?

So easy on our selfies
It's really not self toot
It's more about assuring
We still live and compute.

(C) 2011 All rights reserved

See you everyday
haven't seen myself (in quite a spell)

my brain is
an abandoned building, a dry well

I traced your phone call
to some viral spiral

I'm connected to you
in a spider-like way

--webs, phobias and decay

the essence of life is
reproduction and mortality

see you everyday
in shivering downloaded depravity

your starry smiles
your synthetic ciphers

and I'm all alone again

this body is a safe house
this fear, a panic room

but the enemy within
is always right under my skin

my wife watches tik tok in bed
sounding like she is trying
to tune in a radio to someone's life
so many voices fading in and out
or maybe a spirit box with a message
from the other side

I'm with Johannes Gutenberg
some 570 years behind
the smell of the print as much
an enjoyment as the words inside
the book I am reading
about his life

we lie
a respectable distance between us
centuries apart

High rises burst from soft Earth’s flesh

Was it even ready for us?

From an extraterrestrial’s perspective we’re a disease upon this gentle cerulean Elysium

I’m living in the mouth of duality

I hear it speak as I leave my block and give a peace sign to the abandoned residences in progress

On the block I currently live, the sidewalk is cracked into drunken mazes and yet

                            Directly across, the neighbors stand upon freshly minted asphalt and into a metropolitan construct made for the modern brain: built in amenities, contemporary textiles and garage parking

Are we next?

To be bought and sold, if so, can we at least have a plan for the residents?

Will tenants be invited to the newborn paradise? We have the budget to feed cement trucks faster than hungry mouths. It’s become a bad habit

yet I sit by the man-made imperfections

hoping someone cares enough to drip their Eden into the palms of my neighbors

If time will tell I’ve been getting quite the silent treatment

Travel a little deeper and….

Cosmopolitan crossroads coexist with beggars and lost folk….

Since when was the speech divided between affluent and broke?

"IDK?" The duality replies

I thought you’d say that.