I’m stuck swinging within the gears
Of this wretched technology
That sends electric shocks of blunt awareness down the
Bones in my fingers,
Awareness of my loneliness
Whenever I cease to engage
In frivolous chatter,
Tap-tap-tapping out words
Just for the sake of saying something,
Anything,
To fill the air.
I had no clue before I got stuck in
That my thoughts are not as valuable
In silence as in print.
I really didn’t know
That something interesting
Is a hundred times more interesting
If I tell everybody
About it.
But now I am informed,
I am modern,
And I know all of this.
I know and I
Conform to it.
My fingers are a flurry of movement,
A fuzzy, unfocused
Blur,
Racing to keep up with my mind,
With current events,
With my friends’ jokes
And my family’s stories,
With experiences
And shopping trips
And movies
And lousy customers
And cute acquaintances
And carryover teen angst
And the soaring sky at dusk
Clearly showing off for the cameras
And the smartphones,
Singing its colors for the sole reason of
Achieving viral fame.
I’m subconsciously sprinting
To keep up with the rest of the world,
All of these people
Racing
Racing
Racing
To post the cutest, prettiest,
Happiest, coolest, most amazing or
Crazy or mindboggling
Exaggerations
Because we can no longer experience something
Without sharing, posting, tweeting, texting it
To show the world
What a beautiful, amusing, fantastic, meaningful life I live
Now that you can view every little piece of it
And I really hope you like it,
(I really hope you like me)
Because until you do I won’t know
How to feel about it
(or how to feel about myself.)
And as I wait
I’ll text 10 of my friends
20 different thoughts
That mean nothing
In a desperate attempt to ensure
That somebody, somewhere, is thinking about me,
To ensure that I’m still
so special
and so important,
To ensure that I don’t disappear.