As wires round the world get lighter and thinner
Your news scroll feeds you various homicides,
From desktops at noon to plasma at dinner,
The auto-cue scrolls through this week’s most viral.
The network fail to mention the other seven billion
Who kept living their life devoid of such sinning.
Disquiet on your perch, picture your pleasure:
Hopping alone, around your enclosure.
The window slides up, wind ruffles your feathers.
Beak to the bars, you're helplessly tethered.
Yell 'til you're heard, ’til you’re hoarse and unkempt,
Yell 'til the neighbours are mad and hell bent.
Step back to your pedestal, tapping your feet,
The rhythm you summon traverses the streets.
Nearby inhabitants sit watching their screens,
Warn-out, occupied, unfulfilling their dreams.
Tip-tap-a-tip-tap-a-tip-tap away the evening and next day.
Now you live vicariously through social media,
You cannot stop tweeting, lonelier… lonelier.
Connections you make get quicker and quicker.
‘Life is the greatest’ upon appearances,
You pick and you carve a residual image;
The best fools fool themselves into submission,
Post exponentially, build on your rhythm;
Second life, third face, prosodic yet speechless,
Your diary now echoes, empty and featureless.
Stare at your screen, silent and grinning;
Hive mind rewired, this story needs spinning.
Forget losing face, that farcical demeanour.
The needle wobbles on your false life fever,
As sunlight exposes where your cage is broken,
The tether is loose but you're past noticing.
Shared knowledge free of charge, constantly flowing,
Ignore others' viewpoints, or pleas to come in.
The glass in the window is brilliantly glowing,
There's fire outside that your posts have been stoking.
White noise, connection lost, you're no longer hosting
That multi-channel, fibre-optic, bandwidth expansion.
Untether your Ethernet, the cage disappears
Find sanctuary outdoors when quiet is near.
The caged bird tweets devoid of all reason,
Fooling itself about its own lack of freedom.