Algorithms of distant communication

This new world, with the same old maladies,

and the new ways of expressing them!

In touch, always ready to chat 24/7!

but has ‘lost’ the touch

Speaking through 

machines to machines

Connected virtually, 

disconnected from reality!

What is in this conversation,

 You are reading, 

but are you listening?

 

I am Facebooking my friends 

all over the world, chatting and, 

feeling connected through & through,

But, do I have time to actually ‘chat’ with those around me?

and even if I do, 

aren’t they all chatting 

to someone, 

somewhere else too!

 

And what is in this conversation 

we are having,

our heads down, our fingers busy,

in the Algorithms of what is expected,

We don’t look up, and 

keep producing standard answers

Hiding behind these claps, 

smilies, frowns,

love hearts, likes and cheers, 

as they say better what I can say or

what you choose to share, even tears!

So much so that 

the medium has become 

the message!

You are reading me, 

but are you listening?

 

We are creating our own truths,

in our parallel worlds, 

analogous to each other,

walking together but 

never the twain meet!

I ‘breathe’ in my echo chamber,

inhale what chimes with me,

exhale what rhymes with me,

reinforced, and amplified tenfold, 

by repetition!

While you, in yours, doing the same! 

You don’t see, what I see, 

and 

I don’t know what you know

as ours is a different script of the same story, 

My hero'es are not heroes in yours, and vice versa, 

 and your truths are rubbish in mine  and vice versa!

The essence of what you tell me

in a ‘forwarded many times’ message, is lost on me.

You are surprised 

when I don’t ‘like’ it,

 and I am dumbfounded 

that you liked it!

 

 

What is in this conversation

You are reading me, 

but are you listening?

From an Echo to another, yes,

we the victims of Hera’s curse,

left to repeat the repetition,

Cursed to -

repeat, reinforce, re-forward!

 

 

Once upon a time, I remember,

when you spoke, 

with your lips twisted at an angle,

with your eyes smiling or 

pretending to go glazed,

and I got it, the emotion, the joke, the idea! 

It remains imprinted in my mind,

can’t be edited, paused or replayed!

Unlike the mechanical messages that

we send and receive each day,

And in too much communication,

what is of essence is lost!

 

What is in this conversation,

you are reading me,

but are you listening?

Are you listening?

Where are you?

(This was presented at the Sydney Writers Festival Auburn poetry event last evening 29th April 2021).