Poetry Interlude

I write this stuff every now and then. Enjoy or ignore as you see fit.

The internet is little but image management—

black and white facts or opinions or jokes

posted in bright, moving colors.

Yet such things do not move me

Those moments come only with real presence:

actual flesh, real blood, sensuous touch.

Or sometimes those moments are solitary--

--a moment between me and my head

--or a shiver of wind in a landscape of the real

--or a tremor of recognition in a book

when I see myself in plain words on the page.

A hundred public “happy birthdays” suffice to a point

yet in the end, it is the private message

the unseen kindness that matters.

The technologists keep promising the magic

of the real, and people keep craving it

awaiting the virtual real

instead of seeing and loving the actual real

all around them.

Perhaps someday they will get there and

millions will share

sunsets…

quiet moments…

landscapes…

restaurants…

…with those they love without really being there

Those of us who already live in our heads

will have reality at yet another remove

from the experience in our heads

Maybe it will feel the same

Maybe we won’t know the difference

Maybe the new real will be no better or worse than

the old reality we were born to live.

Some claim we’ve been living this way all along:

always at one remove from reality

because we cannot experience it directly:

a Platonic shadow dance forever beyond our grasp

The world is too strange and hurtful and wondrous

to think that way.

At this moment, at this blurring border between

ever-receding reality

and ever-approaching dreams

I can only assume that this world is real

It deserves to be enjoyed and appreciated as it is

(or as we perceive it to be)

and lived as if it all matters.

/b

3/26/14