Cave
The light that emits from my computer screen
Asperses shadows like a music box projector's
Ceiling diorama—
They spin around and around,
Swirling in the aleatoric symphony
Of indetermined notes,
Ingeminated until I fall asleep—
In my mind.
I don't want to look up,
I don't want to look up,
I don't want to look up—
Because if I do,
I might realize
That where I am,
Hooked on the O/S
Of terminal attachment,
A besotted addiction
To buzz words that rattle me from my consciousness
And quake me through the cracks of the pop culture lifestyle.
I only see a ventose orator,
Up at the pulpit,
Preaching mediocre thoughts,
And banal blah blah blah blah blahs,
And what am I learning here by reading this?
Why
Do I read this?
I could do other things with my time,
Couldn't I?
No, I'm chained to the carpet I'm rolling over,
Burning my elbows into scabby skin ash,
Peeling away my sun-burnt arms for no reason
Other than to watch what I can't see or feel.
My nervous system is shutting down,
Each synapses is becoming indurate,
So I can feel like a sponge—
Which has no nervous system, by the way—
And soak in
Whatever
Boastful basking
I choose
Today,
Or some meaningless news story that says,
"Studies show" without giving links to what that study is,
So I can verify that the information is pertinent
Of just taken out of context the same way Fox News
Will splice through all the words they found in a dictionary
To form a single, not always complete sentence.
I think I might surround myself with all these empty
Activities to keep myself from feeling empty,
Telling myself how stupid everyone else is
To avoid telling myself
That I simply don't understand anything—
Though I wish I did—
And, by rejection, I prove that there is something else,
Something that I can believe in,
Something that I just haven't found yet,
So I Google, Google, Google—
Then I wonder if they're watching what words I type into their search engine
Which makes me wonder why I'm so paranoid about people reading my
Information when I'm not trying to hide anything,
Or so I suppose.
I annex my thoughts in the morass of public domain
To hope that I might feel more accepted—
Even if I outwardly proclaim that it doesn't make much
Of a difference to me what people think
(LIAR) .
But, if I look up,
For only a second,
At 2 AM, when everyone
Should actually be sleeping,
I'll notice how quiet the world really is,
That the reality of things
Is that I'm actually alone
And nobody is talking to me,
Watching me,
Collecting my thoughts so they can be harvested
In a machine of mass-bombardment and resignation.
I'm totally alone,
And that makes me scared.
This is why we use the internet.
Nobody listens anymore,
So we call to each other,
"Listen to me, listen to me, nobody listens to me,
So please listen to me, "
And that's what we pretend to do.
At the same time,
We don't want to be fully honest;
We don't want to expose ourselves anymore than we already are;
We want to be like the people that millions of dollars
On reality TV because they don't have to do anything
To make enough money to never have to do anything again,
Or like the movie stars that popularize our illusions.
Then, the one day, we see the truth,
Ruffling out from behind the nonexistent paper
That makes the pages we sift through,
And it's not a pretty thing,
So we hide it
The way we hide ourselves,
Hoping we only remember what diffused sunlight was
When our eyes, pupils wide open, just soaked up
A whopping globule of solar plasma
That now flares through our brains,
Frying everything we used to know,
Giving us a blindness that should help us see.
It doesn't.
So we,
Or at least I,
Turn back around,
And try to sit down,
Continue with the perpetual waste
Of my time,
But I can't help
Being unsettled.
poem by Tim Stensloff
Added by Poetry Lover
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