Imagine what would happen if suddenly
All of our technology just vanished?

I *know that most think
Life would become  serene and peaceful
With socialisation and healthy leisure
All year round

But if we stop and truly picture
This new world
What we will  see
Is chaos and confusion

With no understanding of how
To socialise besides our
Digital devices
And with no clue  how
To yield a bat and ball.

Beyond this our drone-like minds
Wouldn't be able to comprehend
How to read or draw
Magical talents belonging to
An older world.

How pitiful existence is
With all of our life force
Being ****** into these gadgets
And how truly unlucky
For the new generation
As all their talents and mind are wasted.

Instead of foraging around making connections
with cables and wireless systems that
bluetooth and sync their way
into our pocket technologies
and portable screens

(tablets of which we self-prescribe
and regulate through overdose
and comatose keenings of stillness
and waking dreams)

why, instead
don’t we fool around
making connections
with others of like mind and brainwaves
instead of radiowaves and
the mastered minds of computer waves
and lift an arm and
really wave
beyond our windows to
real people
in real time
rather than peeping
like a holographic Tom through
tabs and browsing windows,
multi-tasking time in a state of mime
like it’s about to expire

(like the wireless wires will break)

and all that we’ll have is
all we can physically take
from this moment awake we call ‘life’
– a mistake.

What else is left now
in this vegetative
one man one woman state
where we live to close our eyes
and shut our minds and wait for
the modem-router to re-dial and
get our avatar back online and
our friends back into our
multi-dimensional realer-than-time
time?

Pseudonyms solving identity changes
emerge without birth
with designer non-faces, as
now that we no longer need imperfection
or meaning or privacy
or even perception
we alter ourselves to impress our connections
with whom we connect without really connecting
by hiding as one almost nearing detection
and tip-toeing straight past
concern or reflection

(invisible firewalls at our protection)

our own walls around us
with keys we can capslock,
screening ourselves from unfriended friends,
and playfully sated by charm and ‘pretends’
that will mean next to nothing
when fantasy ends.

Where ARE the connections we make
in this digital age
that we rarely turn off since
the internet craze has become a new God
that we dial to be saved
as we sacrifice friends we once made
face to face
with those we are longing to meet
as we race across networks
with hunger and haste and
with spambots and data and viruses made
to detect and infect
and reject, just for starters,
and that’s not to mention
the ads and the logins and
passwords that lock us
from somewhere far yonder
that doesn’t exist
as we grow ever fonder
of pics and of pixels and
texts of expression
– the reality of which
we could lose in a second.