We watch them watch themselves on screen
The Scroll (VIII)
VIII.
These bedroom sirens abound on lives entangling viewers adrift in dreaming, in nets of beauty, gaze, and vibes, with voices soft and smiles beaming. Give us all your time, they chant, the devouring music of devotion. Forward on our phones we cant, wrecked on rocks of lost attention. We watch them watch themselves on screen, lured by love and lust and loneliness. They watch themselves being seen, the joy of beauty being noticed. Beauty in love with itself, beauty admiring its own reflection in the pool. The fate of youth, says the story, for the crime of being nasty and cruel. They will be dead before they’re old. Old age will seem no different than death. And we will drown in waters dark and cold when time has fled and there is nothing left. By different means come to the same end. They swallowed by insatiable conceit, and we, ignoring the dread portend, marooned on rocks of love incomplete.
The Scroll
I - Tell them there’s nothing left of the tribes of the Internet
II - Decorous thoughts strung from profiles, posts nailed to a slat
III - The man alone at his computer
IV - As it was written, so is it literal
V - I have the feeling nothing online is meant for me
There are, I think, too few poems (and poets) exploring the idiosyncrasies of digital things through traditional lyricism. But you are doing this, and doing it well!
I could almost imagine these words coming from one of the great dead poets of old, if he were to see modern society. Very insightfully and artfully crafted. :)
So many good lines in this! I particularly liked:
"wrecked on rocks of lost attention."
"They will be dead before they’re old."
"We watch them watch themselves on screen,
lured by love and lust and loneliness."