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Juliana Apr 2021
A grid of nine, trapped behind
the locked box of cyberspace,
unavailable, calling for me.

The pink hues of stories and pictures,
the celebrities announcing another ad,
an AMA, capturing the repeated days.

A robotic stage, the marvelous mingling
of strangers, of friends we’ll never truly meet.
It’s hard to stay away for long.

The green and blue bubbles of simplicity.
Of how was your day. Of excitement. Of plans.
A concert of lyrics addressed only to me.

The bird which sings for all to hear.
The nerds who look up from their book
to smile a hello. The chaotic certainty
of community, calling for me.

After a day away, I’ve arrived back home,
the rectangular refuge of a reimagined reality.
Homunculus Jan 2021
**** if I know.
I scarcely understand much anymore.
I am but a puddle of coherent reminiscences
oozing across the floor into decoherence and
diffusing into maximum entropy.

We are in Hell:
all is Maya,
all is Mara,
all is Dukkha.
Yet, we are slaves
who love our chains.

And I am a lifeless, fetal,
**** economicus,
mortifying de rigeur
in the ossified skull of a
long forgotten **** sapien.

If only those kinship instincts could've
survived the havoc we've wrought.
Look at what we've done.
Look at what we do.

**** for money.
**** for oil.
**** for land.
**** for 'justice.'
**** for God
**** for 'the cause'
**** for the sake of killing,
and pave over what's left.

Leave a few trees and bushes for our
dystopic terrarium.
'Our Synthetic Environment,'
old Murray[1] called it.

Now, walk into the forest.
Be there. Stay there.
Do you feel it?
Any of this nonsense we call
'civilization'?

Or
is it that you feel something more. . .  
poignant?
More true?
To a point where our heated debates
appear as no more than frivolous diatribes?

When do we stop all this narrative solipsism
and get to the ******* point?
None of this is real.
Our thoughts are not our own.
Have they ever been?

The Spectacle [2] reigns supreme
as we idle spectators
speculate idly upon it.

Borges's fable of the cartographers [3]
has reached its apotheosis,
and we are its unwilling
and unwitting victims. . . .
A bit too much wine is the culprit here, I suspect.

1: Murray Bookchin, radical social theorist and major figure in the ecology movement.
2: "In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation." - Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle, 1967
3: The Borges story, credited fictionally as a quotation from "Suárez Miranda, Viajes de varones prudentes, Libro IV, Cap. XLV, Lérida, 1658", imagines an empire where the science of cartography becomes so exact that only a map on the same scale as the empire itself will suffice. [source: Wikipedia]
Lewis Wyn Davies Sep 2020
Goodbye kiss to the day I'll miss.
Put headphones on and select a song.
Down the cobblestones until further decision.
Division like the very fabric of football.
Could choose my normal route to The Square,
just four corners to take - a simple shape -
see proud flags made of organic thread,
all the colours I like will be on display. Although,
what if I head down Butcher Row instead?
Sure it's steeper down the shuts but
I fancy my luck out there today.

Before the leap, I see a wall
so opposite to my position, it's hostile.
How long have these concrete eyes watched on?
I'm terrified and contemplate calling in sick,
return to rich address and don't overthink.
Then in each direction, groups meet at the centre.
There's pointing and shouting and spit flying
into hair that's in flames and ignites more people
to march out deluxe doors left ajar
as kids peer through windows
above the obscenity.
Hesitate to whisper,
future back in that house,
until I see bricks change angle.

Thinking in pink.
Shout loud about my background.
Grab the handle of both sides.
Point my crooked nose at the stone:
'Let's climb this together.'
'Peace and love forever.'
Those at the back can't hear my speech.
But those really listening cheer and preach.
Reach for ladders or offer cupped palms.
Touch the top layer but get knocked off
by a flare thrown from out of nowhere.
Hunt the culprit while the victim burns.
Bodies clamber to sample some action
like a mound of sugar infested with ants.
Look back at my house in a peaceful daze.
Turn to the melee and see a knife in my face.
Poem #11 from my collection 'A Shropshire Grad'. It's 280 words about a certain social media website.
Lewis Wyn Davies Sep 2020
Each day, we carry our names through urban terrain.
For every letter laid out and shining atop the cityscape,
a thousand more become garbage scattered in darkness.
Yet I'm courted into thinking I'm on the right street
by algorithms selling dopamine down Sideways Alley.

Too soon after bearing my soul on the infinite scroll,
tourists flock and flap to get at the itch on my back.
Their words cut deep like plastic knives at a banquet.
Their hearts warm like the walls of an empty fridge.
Breadcrumbs left behind only lead to the trapdoor.

Those in luxury estates who threw paint on a throne -
their patches of land fertile and thriving up to the gates -
offer tips on organic growth that can build into empires,
while those packed in high-rise blocks act like bandits,
egos painted loud on knock-off flags hung to balconies.

What am I in this black hole of corrupted competition?
Views above the skyline only provide anxious thoughts.
Occasionally, I find answers in unseen neighbourhoods.
An outstretched hand holds a glass of chilled apple juice.
Now we go round each other's house to share fresh fruit.
Poem #8 from my collection 'A Shropshire Grad' focuses on social media.
Logic to the dissonant, confetti into flames
watch it turn to ash.
The disquieted don’t want comfort,
they want to protect their definition of purity
and simply, for the complexities of the universe
to serve them solely.

Dissatisfaction becomes identity,
a vice to sate,
just one more redemptive hit
and they’ll sleep
dreaming of their idyllic reconstruction of reality.

Everyone’s a visionary
blind to the piteous state
of their mass-conformist unity fantasy,
forgetting that autonomy isn’t only in the mind of the beholder.
Unpolished Ink Jul 2020
Hungry Twitter beast
Constantly demanding food
Are you never full?
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