Tag Archives: modern life

Reblog: No Longer in the Present

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I’m rerunning this blog from two years  ago for Lisa, who liked this photo I used on my Numbers Game blog and wanted to know the story behind it.  This is the poem I ran with it in June of 2023.

 

No Longer in the Present

Seated around the table in our favorite cafe,
attention to each other has come to be passé
We are not present here and now. We’re all in other places
as we stare at tiny screens, intent on other faces.

The friends we have around us will simply have to wait
for our interest in the world-at-large to finally abate.
The news that’s happening elsewhere is simply more amusing
than what might be happening in this space our body’s using.

Other friends are funnier in their “selfie” poses—
pooching out their lips at us and scrunching up their noses.
It won’t do to look natural, we have to look unique
in the selfsame pose that all selfie-flashers seek.

So if your friends are boring, not half so chic as you,
you always have the option to make a Tweet or two.
Check out the latest fashions available from China.
They’ll only take three months to reach you here in Carolina.

Check out the weather in Tibet and give YouTube a glance.
Companions won’t distract you if you don’t give them a chance.
Living one life at a time no longer has to do
so long as you remember to have your phone with you!

So if you’ve dropped a French fry and spilled ketchup down your dress,
you needn’t be embarrassed. It couldn’t matter less.
Intent on Twitter, Instagram, Facetiming and Facebooking,
the friends with you won’t notice, for nobody is looking.

Tick-Tock, for The Sunday Whirl Wordle 729

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My Grandmother’s clock

Tick-Tock

Back when there was magic,
before the world was broken,
in my childhood’s comfy nest,
the major language spoken
is remembered as a ghost of words
blown in on a breeze.
Life was one great treasure,
set out for us to seize.

The last war newly over, 
the news of the time
seemed to tell of happenings
peaceful and benign.
No need for bomb shelters
or ICE or interventions.
My childhood passed most peacefully,
mainly free of tensions.

Time seemed to drag on slowly
from birthday to Halloween.
There seemed to be a hundred years
between toddler and teen.
But now that I am 78, life whizzes by as though
it’s making up for all those years when it passed by so slow.
And peace that in my innocence I thought would always last
has become just a memory of an idyllic past.

 

 

 

for The Sunday Whirl 729  the prompt words are: magic back broken nest seems drag news breeze life ghost need tell

Grandpa Discovers Virtual Reality

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Grandpa Discovers Virtual Reality

I’ve been over yonder and frankly I’m perplexed
about how all the young ‘uns seem to be so under-sexed.
Virtual reality makes real-time life a bore.
Why bother with reality when you can live on lore?

Real life takes some gumption but virtual life’s a snap.
Who needs real love with Kim Kardashian upon your lap?
It seems that in the future perhaps all folks will live thusly,
sitting watching screens to live their lives vicariously.

 

Prompt words are perplexed, vicariously, frankly, yonder and snap. Image by Lucrezia Carnelos on Unsplash.

“The Fool Doth Think He Is Wise”

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“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
–Wm. Shakespeare
“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.”
                                                                                    —Charles Darwin  in The Descent of Man
“The Dunning–Kruger effect is a hypothetical cognitive bias stating
that people with low ability at a task overestimate their ability.”
–(Wikipedia)

“The Fool Doth Think He Is Wise”

Although his conclusion was toothsome and salty,
it was my colleague’s premise I found to be faulty.
His logic? Ramshackle, for facts in his keeping
would make a logician run, screaming and leaping,
out of the room and over the hill,
when of this insanity, he’d had his fill.

Light intellect teamed up with heavy endeavor,
expressed by a soul neither heartful nor clever
is a dangerous pairing in this Internet world,
where such like-minded fools, their illogic unfurled,
can find a wide audience, hardly deserved,
that would leave Einstein weeping and Hawking unnerved.

 

Prompt words are colleague, ramshackle, leaping, premise and heavy.

Waiting in the Dark

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Waiting in the Dark

Why are you waiting in the dark
listening to the wind’s sharp bark?
Elsewhere is diversion enough––
Internet and other stuff.
Distraction is the modern mode,
emoticons to speak in code.
Don’t place yourself upon a shelf.
Come take a photo of yourself
and post it on your Facebook wall.
Introspection won’t do at all.
Log onto Tinder and make a date.
Only losers sit and wait.

 

For the dVerse Poets theme of “Waiting.” But, since I missed the post cutoff by 54 minutes, I’ll post it here! 

Soul’s Assurance

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DSC08097

Soul’s Assurance

Modern advertising urges
we participate in splurges,
touting “things” as means of pleasures
not obtained by other measures.

But our pursuit of all these things
does not give our spirits wings.
Sometimes we just seem bound in them.
Happiness can’t be found in them.

Satisfaction can’t be bought.
That house, that diamond or that yacht
Are merely consolation prizes
that come in many different sizes.

Love can’t be slipped upon a finger.
Houses get sold and yachts don’t linger.
The only thing you get to keep
is what lies buried dark and deep

within yourself—that deep assurance
that is your heart and soul’s  insurance
that it’s been swollen by your life
instead of stolen by your life.

The prompts made use of in this post were pursuit and splurge.
https://fivedotoh.com/2018/12/30/fowc-with-fandango-pursuit/
https://onedailyprompt.wordpress.com/2018/12/30/your-daily-word-prompt-splurge-December-30-2018/