It seems such an innocent
Picking-up-of-the-phone
A moment of boredom
Fleed from -
The first video watched
Then a second
Then the endless stream
Of promises never kept -
Searching mind
Looking for the end of a rainbow.
To disengage
Is like tearing our sticky eyes
From the screen’s magnetic touch
As we pop back into the real world,
Shocked at how far we fell
Under its influence.
Someone conceived
This hand-held drug,
Intended the capture
Of the mind,
Wished the restless hand
Fidget for the scrolling picture
Which feeds on emptiness
And delivers more of the same.
Casually, we’d say
What’s the harm in it?
And yet all of us know
That half the walking world
Are caught in the phone,
And scare even look where they go.
It’s as if an evil hypnotist
Had created a magic device
Into which he bid us all look,
Yet, hid the dire cost;
His corporate wish
To enslave us to his corporate tool
And make us forget
The route home,
Calling us to climb into our phones
And never look back.
Forget your bodies, he says,
You no longer need them.
drugs
On The Road
He might be Californian,
Shaggy
In flared denim suit
And long
Sun blond hair
Agitating his eyes.
He wears a moustache
And breath
Spiced bourbon and cigarette.
The days are a sun blanched
Headache while the nights
Are dizzying breakneck
Of life lived fast
With liquor cubed drink
Chinking glimmer in a glass,
Or bottle neat
From a brown paper bag
Hidden in a back street:
It’s all much of a muchness.
There are girls:
All with faraway look,
Smacked up
And drifting nowhere
On the drug of sex
And fleeting break
From loneliness
Found in strange
Bedfellow’s quiver
And alcoholic unburdening
Of orgasm before sleep.
He says – be cool baby –
To whom ever he meets
On the road,
Salutes them
With joint
Marihuana journey
Or acid trip
To nameless places,
Passing in a flurry of faces,
Hard as cold asphalt,
Futureless and travelling
Without name.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
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