We seek attention,

Facebook,
Twitter,
Instagram,
Tinder,
Kik,
Snapchat,
It's all about the most
Likes,
Comments,
Retweets,
Favorites,
Snaps,
Followers,
Where have our real friendships gone?
When something goes wrong we post a selfie,
write a status,
send a snapchat,
or tweet about it.
For what?
For the hopes to hide our feelings on the internet.
For the hope that a stranger will like it,
That a stranger will leave a comment saying everything will be okay?
We have become numb.
Forgetting the real relationships in our lives.
When there's a problem, we escape to the internet for that next like instead of talking to someone who actually cares.
When we don't get the attention we're looking for, we post a #selfie to find what we're looking for.
Social media has become the new drug of our age,
And it's changing the way we live our day to day lives.

2478 friends on Facebook
4.6k followers on Instagram
2.1k followers on Twitter

Thousands of likes
Digital affirmations to an insecure soul
Hundreds of retweets
In agreement of a pretentious quote
Innumerable hearts sent
Wowing the 'hippy-artistic' Mac picture

Every portals overflowing with attention
Yet not a single shred
Not a drizzling drop
Of genuine care

We spend our lives peeping into the digital windows of others souls
Comparing. Mocking. Craving. Envying.
Physically distancing each other with every WhatsApp call.

Until one day
Staring at a dead blank screen
The deafening silence choking her
She wakes up with a gasp
Sifting through the thick cobwebs blinding her
To see the nothingness
Not a trace of warmth left behind

Finally, the silence steals away her awareness
The emptiness blinding her soul
Pushing and choking
In the end
A mere corpse remains
Still chained to the online life support
Just a being
But no more a soul

Since when did a number define our importance?

The number of likes on a photo, the number of retweets on a tweet or even the number of followers you have.

All of these mean nothing in the grand scheme of things but to people today these numbers define who we are as if they tell us our self-worth.

We are a society addicted to technology and are constantly trying to prove to others that we are cool or trying to fit in.

Do not let a number define you. Enjoy who you are and be what you want to be. You do not need a screen or an app to tell you what you or who you should be.

Numbers don't define you. You define yourself.

Arise all people who heed our call
For our nation’s girls are about to fall.
Heard are their cries
From thousands of miles.
So let us ride to Chibok,
Mounted on horses in bulk.

Your retweets and hashtags will not save them!
We need more than goodluck and patience!
We need more prayers and action!
Indeed, we shall meet them in battle!

When shall we Bring Back Our Girls?
When the campaign becomes Bring Back Our Women?

When people ask what I do for a living,
I respond

“Listening to my heart ******
as my mind garden blossoms
incandescent indigo constellations
humming the songs of nature’s entirety.

I sensually embrace the entirety’s
divine lips kissing my spirit
with sacred words
merging into me—
a blissful osmosis of neurotransmitters
waltzing with my consciousness
flowing liquid electricity
and molten rhythms of oxygen
in kinetic unison through moments
of subjective apocalypses
slowly returning to yugen.”

When asked where I see myself in ten years,
I respond

“Copacetic contentment—
having surrendered my life
to more than just the digital currency
of likes and retweets
and the constantly dissolving paper coins
because I chose to see people
as breathing pieces of naked art,
in progress,
stripped down to their thoughts
jettisoned through this spherical time
of infinite space and possibility
slowly accepting there is more out there
beyond traditional political religical flimflam,
beyond abnormal logicality,
beyond nirvana.”

It's all about the filter
And not personality.
It's all about the cake make up ,
And not the true beauty.
It's all about the wcw
All about the body shape,
Promoting beauty
Looking like a product.
No longer human,
not advertising the mind.
Hair hair everywhere from
Brazilian
to Indian
Comparing who rocks it best.
Looking like mermaids with seaweed dye on it,
It's all about a cool dance , dumb lyrics and a hot beat ,
Not real music about life
Just a free promotion of ****, money and *******.
Making the world go crazy.
Believing this is the way life is,
Get high or die.
It's all about social media and not putting the phone down to enjoy nature.
The outside , has now become the phone.
All about linking up but not wanting a relationship
Just a friend with benefits.
Hiding our heart in our sleeves.
Not expressing our feelings .
We are trying to impress the world
When truly a bit of us dies every minute.
We are being judged by the social media
Twerking,
Doing the fire challenge.
And tryna beat everyone in the dumbest challenge,  just so we can get new followers , retweets and praises.
Instead of reading a book and learning something new.
Or trying to achieve our dreams.
We're not even working hard no more.
We are becoming slaves to the media.
That we don't seem to realise , that we lost our identity.
We were made original but most of us are dying as a copy of another. We no longer have our unique colour.
We are all blending in.
Smoking marijuana because it's cool and you will be accepted by the society.
But what happened to being ourselves?
Being loud
Being funny
Being caring
Or taking our time to show affection to one another.
We are no longer happy with the reflection we see in the mirror.
We are losing ourselves,  
We've become so lazy.
We're not inspired no more.
Or respected
We are so focused on living the now ,
with no idea how that will affect us tomorrow.
But at the end of the day, we must remember that most of the people we try and please . Will not be there , in your times of need and pain. Or bury you . Why??because we have become the lost generation. 2014.  It's time to wake up!

She's away at times for a day or more and
I sit waiting by the door or listening
for the phone to ring to bring me news,

because she completes the circuit and
bridges the gap which makes me happy
and all of that is good.

Sometimes when I'm away
I think a day lasts as long as a year
and wish she was here with me or
there with me or anywhere with me

unbelievably for me she wishes it too.

and on the cosmic shoreline
when
time is suspended
and all life has retreated
the telephone will ring
and I'll be listening for
her voice.

i used to do it for the attention
the likes
the retweets
the comments
on my pictures
on my tweets
on my statuses
on me

they made me feel validated
safe
secure
accepted
“you are good” my brain translated
“they like you” it went ?on, “that’s good"

they made me feel like i
belonged
somewhere

until they didn’t.

until i felt
numb
in the head
the words didn’t mean anything
the attention wasn’t enough

until i
couldn’t look myself in the mirror
without hating who i was
who i
became?
who i
who i
who i
who am i?

who
am
i?

and so i was forced to realize
forced — for if i didn’t, i may have died
i forced myself
to stop
i forced myself
to come to the conclusion
other people’s words did not matter
they did not matter

for if i let them matter
then i may have broken
to the point
that i could not put myself back together

“they matter” my brain told me.
“no, they do not.” said my mouth. “they do not matter.”
“yes they do.”
“no they don’t.”
“they— ?”
“— don’t.”
“but — “
“they don’t.”
“th— “
“”they don’t matter.”
“you don’t believe— “
“whether or not i believe, they still do not matter.”
“they won’t accept you.”
“they don’t have to.”
“they won’t love you.”
“but i will."
“but — “

“they,” i said
to the ‘me’ in the mirror
slowly
surely
determinedly
“do not matter."

they did not matter they did not matter  they did not matter they did not matter they did not matter they did not matter they did not matter they did not matter they did not matter they did not matter they did not matter they did not matter they did not matter they did not matter they did not matter they did not matter they did not matter they did not matter they did not matter they did not matter

for the only one that mattered
the only opinion that mattered
the only validation that mattered

was mine.

the feeling that no one is listening
because there are no likes on my latest status
no retweets
no hearts on the face of my instagram
the cement words of the internet do me no good
because no one
is listening
no one hears me
when i speak with floating words or lead-like typography

my self-assurance falters
am i not popular
is this highschool
is all of humanity one big highschool class that doesn't want to sit with me at lunch  
is it the internet that taught me this?

is the internet bad because it is the internet
or is it bad because i am exposed to more humans than i ever would be
normally
is that what
makes it
bad

So innocent then,
No predators or shaming,
No clamoring for likes or retweets,
Just outdoors and skinned knees,
Rarely stopped to disrupt the flow
with a self taken photo.
Imaginations abound,
Once a cowboy now a sailor,
tomorrow to be continued.
Friends for life not followers for a day,
Memories in mind
Not a timeline

These are not human beings
flourishing amidst their modern backdrop
of screens and social media
and likes and retweets and the like

These are not smiling faces
aboard the train on their daily commute
heading to the job they hate
so they can come home to the family
who doesn't love them

These are not happy marriages
packed with love and affection,
But more like a failure
just a worthless, shattered piece of glass
that we grind beneath our shoes on the floor

These are caffeine and adderall-driven bodies
holding guns to their heads
as they **** down a coffee
right after getting no sleep for the millionth night in a row
so they can go to work and contribute to society

Society that is cutting-edge
Society that is the greatest yet
Society like a train with broken brakes
Humans like robots

These are silhouettes
with their souls ripped out of them
These are dead bodies
murdered

pretty girls snappin' away
straight ******* pretending they're gay

outside, older men catcall
in my room, i silently bawl

funny girls tweeting for fun
300 retweets make them stun

8 year old boys know what moaning is
thinks it's funny, making their girls his

school playground's bully is big
peer pressures nerd in taking a swig

movies in Hollywood are less dramatic than my life
when will the end come to this strife

what are you waiting for, little bird?
the day has just begun, there was an angel
at 5th street and she told me to say hi to you,
little bird. what’s your plan for today?

you cannot sit around and wait for a suitor to offer words of praise,
you must learn to sing your own.
you will not get a thousand retweets on that little bird app but you must
do, anyway. do, anyhow. do, do. i do.

i bear with me no key to help you flee
there will not be a kind knight to hear your plea

o little bird, remind me
of your plans of jailbreak last night, speak
to me, have you learned to bend metals with your beak?
will you set yourself free?

I watched you die
Wasn't there next to you
Nowhere in your site
Just on my cell phone
Watching you die
While the next meme follows in the timeline
I saw your family cry
I've never met them
Don't even know anyone who knows them
Saw them on a YouTube
While going through recommended videos
I tuned in to your hashtag
Followed for a few minutes
Liked a few tweets
But didn't retweet
Hit the arrow on the top left
And went back to my timeline
After I watched you take your last breath
You lay lifeless
Not fortunate enough to die in the energy of love
Immortalized in the death of many
But many isn't enough for change
Ever a hashtag
Sustained by newsreels and half­hearted court cases, likes and retweets
Until I watch the next you die in my timeline
Worse yet, I'll read of their demise in a headline
Just last week a man lost his testicles, teeth, and life after a routine stop on the highway, the story
didn't trend or make it into my timeline

And he'll measure his freedom
in fractions of an hour
and wonder all the time
if the average person
the same one that spends
more time with coworkers
than family and friends
also dies unhappy or
at the very least unfulfilled
and if so if the average person
is on average unhappy
for the average length of
their lives are we, on average,
doing something very wrong?

And he'll learn to budget in
the age of autodeductions as
common bill pay procedure.
As if some company storing
his banking information is
a convenience rather than
a glaring imposition.
His personal life is on sale
at the cost of retweets and likes
but as long as people are watching
he'll be able to pretend
he's not so ******* alone.

And the weather will change
and the oceans will rise
and fall and spring may
disappear and summer may reign.
And he'll be the last generation
that remembers how it was
and he'll wonder how the
youth around him can take
so much of it for granted.
He'll wonder how they can
find it all so normal.

My grandfathers were born
in villages in other countries.
Their first homes had no toilets.
They were young orphans
on American streets, once.
When my father was born no
single man had been to the moon.
When I was born school shootings
were unheard of and most homes
had no computer and a landline.

I wonder how he'll be.
I hope he'll be okay.
And he will, even though.
We always seem to be.
But still...

...I wonder all the time.

What lonely compels us to do
Is confounding
I found you expelled
From my calling
Resounding
Still digging last ditch
Shots at loveless
Rebounding
Again and again
To right back
Where I started
Just build me up,
Tear me down
Lost and discarded
Like yesterday’s trash
Or a plastic-packed
Rapper
My self-esteem feels
Like the sight of a crapper
For useless would be
Understating the I,
Can’t do anything right
Don’t know why even try
Just decry
The society
Blame its elites
For this disparate wealth
World of likes and retweets
And I just can’t participate,
Work to keep paying,
Keep buying,
Keep spending
Keep ethos-betraying
Unless there is reason enough
To submit
But without any logical course
You are it