Not On Purpose
A famous line, writ long before my time.
He’d be banned from Twitter, or worse
If he dared to post such verse
In public, in the shallow culture of our own time.
“Do I dare disturb the universe?”
Let us go then, you and I,
And make our escape from this world on-line
Back to a world inhabited by human-kind
Unafraid to say what we like.
No bits on a screen spewing words crass and mean.
Parchment will do.
Let us go then, you and I,
To a world fit for flesh and bone
Where reality means we may suffer alone
But free of the FaceBookInc
And the GoogleCentralHeadQuarters.
But you won’t dare go with me, will you?
I am alone.
I see suburbia. I drive through to work.
It is all illusion, I think as I smirk. Sadly.
The perfect lawns are empty,
But for geese fouling their perfection.
Husbands and wives, daughters and sons
Have abandoned a world that was so costly won.
A new reality I must face,
Gladly embraced by the rest of my race—
Monitored intermediation via a tiny screen
Has become the real world.
Absurd!
I fear I am too old to inhabit this world.
Do I dare disturb the universe?
Not on purpose.
Author’s Note
Inspired by
The set of poems referenced by this article: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/jun/07 poetry.thomasstearnseliot
“Burbank,” “Gerontion,” “Sweeney Among the Nightingales,” “A Cooking Egg,” and “Dirge”
In our age of political correctness, these poems are only grudgingly tolerated, because of who wrote them. My polemic against institutionalized political correctness is after the style of Prufrock
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/44212/the-love-song-of-j-alfred-prufrock
