What fantasm are you gazing at now?
What voices are piped into your
digital cell?

In this feast of information
why does every photon of my being
go dim
with hunger?

Where the electronic buffet groans
with every possible manic morsel,
why . . .
Why so all alone?

Here where the oxygen of an embrace
is replaced by the choking flicker
of a flat techscape—
cold microcosm of a life—
we, like a herd of subjects,
march one, march all
into the titans' cyberlabs to
surrender our minds,
to contort the truth we
were born with.

Which face will you wear today
in this blizzard of lifeless hearts,
yellow smiles and clashes for
your attention?

Whose chains will you drag through
the content-crowded dungeon—
one click to paradise,
one click to your inner pit,
and one scroll to entangled solitude,
straight down
to yet another death.

Blue screen of self.

Quick! Shut it down and go outside
before the grass and the actual colors of
the patient fields forget your name; while
the roses still need you; while you're
still breathing like a human.

Pay homage to the joy of it, the pain of
it, the truth of it and perhaps you'll hear
a drizzle of music in the sun or feel some
unfiltered soul light kissing the air like
snow all around.

So this is what reality tastes like
in the morning.

Here, this belongs to you:
here, take this back, this life, always
another idea in the dreaming Universe,
always new,
as long as you are here.


Patricia Joan Jones