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Wednesday, March 26, 2014

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

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