Bzzzz.
You bolt up in bed and cannot breathe. 
You’ve still got an hour till your first encounter
But you put your assets into reverse; 
Disasters are the characters in your skit – rehearse!   

When your country crumbles so low to the ground
Its most frequent communications 
Are a techno shroud, 
The use of your emojis, maybe?  
In a world of promiscuity 
Light bulbs are no more.
It’s just the flash of a screen 
“You have notifications – 4 .” 

So, in a haze, you become one with technology.
No longer an independent entity,
You could bend or snap at the slightest breeze.
Unsure if you are unlocked or not.
It depends on who has the keys.
Pessimism is a fatal disease.

So that tablet of comfort isn’t what you think it is.
When someone can reach into your home
With a bzzzz of your phone.
It warns that someone’s at the door 
With a dagger in hand and a declaration of war.
“You have notifications – 4.”

I guess it’s possible to set yourself free 
To live in a world of reality. 
But who would join you there? 
Are there that many fish in the sea?
There are few who look up much, unfortunately.

I guess that’s because they don’t like what they see.
Who can blame them? 
You’ve become an empty decree.

You order for the sake of ordering
Burning your contact with bordering neighbors.
It’s the age-old problem of quantity over quality. 
Interactions are fleeting because
There are too many.

Oh, did you get too close? 
Was there a possible moment of authenticity?
Put up a wall, then.
That would be easy.

After all it’s not like you’re really leaving. 
You’d have to have physically been there in the first place, for that.
You remain safely tucked behind your veil of fiction
Not fact.

Your words are just pixels; they don’t mean a thing.
Your anomie remains intact.

You hasten to make it clear that you know better in every way.
But today is not your day.

So, to whom does this era belong?
It’s a hard question to answer when you live in a throng;
A wide variety of empty minds 
All thinking thoughts with blinders on. 
Each believing that theirs is right. 

You sit up in bed late into the night 
Typing furious words onto 
The white light of a screen
Responding like it’s a chore 
To all the words that bore 

Deep into your strongest presumptions.
“You have notifications – 4.”