I see people incessantly pointing cellphones
at themselves & the world
like vicarious, outsourced eyes
I hear people perpetually proselytizing
about how some politician, app, or cryptocurrency is the only ideal
with voices that all sound like someone else's in disguise
I smell an ever-surrounding smog of cities and fuel
forever burning their secret, essential scent of existential fear
I tase too much sugar, salt, and altered chemicals with alphabet-long names
in every omnipresent, faux-food thing, bringing death so much more near
I feel no love extend beyond the flesh or reach to touch in ways
which know more than mindless fingers
that swipe calloused across some screen
I don't know what we're doing here,
I'm not sure what we mean,
but this can't be It
I look for the divine
but see only spectacles
performed by false prophets
with horns, furtive or flaunted
I listen for truths
but hear only lies
that fall for themselves
or slither, hissing to "snuggle"
I stop to smell roses
but there's no longer bees
or at least not enough
to pollenate and provide them
I try to taste pure bliss
but I can't bite onto anything
that hasn't been pummeled into
a product or content which contains and produces
nothing more than a bad taste in my mouth
I reach to hold onto anything
that's not kept on the other side of some glass,
be it that of some screen or the glass-houses
we've all been confined to & sentenced to throw stones
to break out of or into
I don't know what we're doing here,
but none of this fits
History relentlessly casts a shadow of itself
from forever forgotten eons ago
to eternal futures we only pretend to know
While we all speak of dark times
as if they were foreign lands
which we've tried to exile ourselves out of
since we were yet primordial ooze
or which we quietly counter-conspire against
as invaders intent on our extinction & doom
But the sun,
it just stares at us
shimmering in silence
while we dizzy ourselves
to submit & support some
other source of artificial light
which we aim to illuminate
an oasis on both sides of our eyes
while it cooks our brains like heat lamps
left on far too long
And the birds flap their wings exhaustively
to migrate through these schizophrenic seasons
and so many other mammals appear to need no greater reason
than the reasons that guide gliding fish through plastic-pulp oceans
from the unseen depths of their secret abysses
to the heights they can leap to with their fin-winged emotions
I don't know what we're doing here,
but perhaps this is it
