"Anybody?"

[Phrygian]

My sister is a published poet ("Blue Room Poets" available through Amazon) and this one of hers is especially revealing, if not disturbing:

Anybody?

I'm on auto in my auto, on the pavement, in the tube
so don't engage me, you'll enrage me, on the platform, in the tube.
I-can only be so social in societies of one
where I'm chattering and twittering and selfing and i-shun
all interruptions or disruptions to my splendid introspection
I all text the same atonal in a chat sans all reflection

Is there anybody home behind the faces on the phone
while the thumbs upon the keyboard dance a dervish of their own?

I all look at and hear nothing, I all seem the same as one.
Who are you and we and they and us, drop "every" from my "one".
I reject collective pronouns while I ipad on the train.
My eyes look out at no one and my ears hear just the strains
of my world that itunes into while itune all others out.
I engage in selfie self abuse, so intercourse is out.
I am very self sufficient in my self-isorbing state
so unless I'm wired in do not expect me to relate.

Is there anybody home behind the faces on the phone
while the thumbs upon the keyboard dance a dervish on their own?

Those of you who are not programmed may be desperate for connection
may construe my vacant i-stare as a kind of u-rejection
may recoil at how I'm wired in dimensions past your ken
where i-share my cyber feelings with a thousand cyber friends.
You'll take issue at my i-obsessions, want me to desist,
bear in mind that in my consciousness you simply don't exist!
So in blissful i-solation from the human Human Race
I will tweet another twitter, text another smiley face

Is there anybody home behind the faces on the phone
while the thumbs upon the keyboard dance a dervish of their own?

(Linda Ireland)

[Cato]

An indictment of our days!

[North Star]

Great poem, wonderful use of language, and a very accurate description of the modern iLife. Thanks for sharing.

[XB-70 Valkyrie]

One of my favorite quotes from Nassim Taleb:

The 20th century was the bankruptcy of the social utopia; the 21st will be that of the technological one.


So very true for a huge number of reasons.