Millions of shadows rushing past
Fleeting contact, sparks in the void
Only a smallness of reason and rhyme
We talk in circles whilst
Not smiling beyond the veil of light
A tangled web we've chosen to weave
Now our relations are binary.
Just a number, a user ID
Lost in the machine,
I become
A lone,
Me.

O Babylon! Your God is a sport-utility vehicle, a VCR, and a two-car garage!
You delight in images of killing and artificially-large-breasted women!
Your arteries are clogged with Big Macs and a thousand pieces of Kentucky-Fried Chicken!
Your God is Technology.  Your God is Progress.

Your skyscrapers rise to the heavens!  Your astronauts fly to the moon!
You clone sheep! alter genes! make a mountain into a parking lot!
Your fields flower!  Your grain-bins groan under the weight of the ripe corn!
But the land of your soul is a desolation.

O God of Henry Ford, the Wright Brothers, and Bill Gates,...
All the nations adore Thee!
(Pretty soon they'll be ordering Papa John pizza by cell phone in New Guinea....)
Your God is Mammon.

After the movies, after the Quarter-pounders-with-cheese, super-size fries, and a large Coke,
after the evening news, the Hostess cupcakes, golf, beers, and swimming 20 laps,
the hunger will be the same as the day you first felt it, O Babylon!
the thirst of the soul, O Babylon!

I bought myself a new modern mobile
With Internet and all.
***
Such a leap into the stars
After my “Lappy” Laptop
And old Nokia.

Where do I begin?
Either here or on the phone?
At sixty five I need some kid
To show me.

All this feather-light touching and sweeping,
“Apps” and “Data” and battery preservation.
A bewildering jungle of meaningless symbols
That lead you into chaos.

It can be great:
Taking and sharing lovely vistas
For all your Facebook Friends.
Speaking to Google and getting a nice sounding
Lady reply.

Very handy indeed
Until it all goes wrong
And World War Three breaks out
Or else you are Stuck
As surely
As a Prisoner.

But hey, I can be a Fast Learn
Getting there
As at long last I enter
The Twenty First Century.

Paul Butters

I lost my mother

No, not to death
I lost my mother to technology
To social media
To that ******* Facebook
I lost her to the bright rectangular shard of glass that was her phone

There she could reconnect with her friends
See what they were doing
Reunite with long lost childhood buddies
And see cute videos of dogs and babies

I used to love going on dates with my mom
Just the two of us
Most would say we were like sisters
We shared clothes and stories
And life lessons in between
Sips of coffee and slices of cakes
And walks in malls just because we wanted aircon

But now when I'm sitting across her at the table
Her eyes fail to meet mine
If they do all she'd say was wait, I'm replying
Then her eyes would fall back to the screen of her phone
Never-ending conversations became conversations that never even started
Loud chatter above food became silence so loud I could hear myself chew
Laughter and smiles were all the same except they were done looking down, facing a phone

And now I would rather dine alone
Than dine infront of someone glued to their phone
And that says a lot coming from someone with social anxiety and fear of being alone
Because if instead of talking to me your talking to your phone
I really would rather just be alone
I promise you it's not that different

Social media was designed to make us all connected
Countries apart, continents in between
We could talk and call like we were together at that very moment
But now the people were beside
The people we can touch and feel
The people with us physically
We forget to talk to, we ignore
We become disconnected with
Yes, you are retying old ties with your old friends who are miles away
I get that
And I am more than happy for you
That you and your highscool friends talk again
But what's the use of making new ties if you don't keep the ones you have now

I lost my mother to technology
I don't know if it's too late
I know technology won't stop advancing any time soon or any time in the future for that matter
But I have faith
I know beneath my mothers eyes glued to the screen
are the same eyes as the ones that first laid their eyes on me
Who looked at me ever so lovingly,
Like the most precious gift in the world

I lost my mother to technology
And I hope it's not too late to find her again

I love poetry.
I am poetry.
However,
My typing device provides no choice to, with willing will power,
turn of grammar suggestion.

To proof read a poem twice,
and still edit it once;
I love poetry,
I hate my typing device.
I am poetry.
Please steal my typing device from my rear left pocket.

As I need an excuse,
To aquire a new one.

I've confined the greatest hits of Marx
to a playlist
and periodically map over them with dull,
grasping eyes, when desperate for talking points
or anti-capitalism ideation

The works of Bukowski, Poe, Emerson,
tethered to my fingertips where I can stave
them off enough to hold concept
but unearth no meaning

I can pull and manipulate quotes
like nobody's business

I googled Sigmund Freud once
because I forgot how to spell his name

If photos could become life
and give justice to experience and wealth,
I would be Frank Lloyd Wright

If John Muir had an iPhone,
he would be as distracted and rooted
Somehow he died surrounded by angels
at the advent of advertising and public relations;

Emily Dickinson would have been
an Instagram model and romanticized
mental illness

I gasp in admiration and nostalgia
at Rockwell, but that world never existed
beyond his oil, canvas and scope

If the people that wrote the history books
had to read them, they would be
as insatiable as me.

All we are is illusions of aesthetics
to one another
Trapped in the vaguely perfect candor
of rehearsed moments

Tripped up and mired in perspective
because we aren't as lost as they
Only lost to ourselves

The library of my mind relies
on binary communication,
programmed in arbitration

And inside, there's a small child
whose heart still desires to play
But he's overwhelmed and crying for help

In the corner, a yearning spirit
is steadfast and pacified
Forming a benchmark of baseline bullet points
Wrought with cynicism

I am not smart
I am not profound
I am not layered
I am not organic
I am not the next great American anything