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Tuesday, August 2, 2016

Collectively


People walk before city shops 
Bus stops, aprons to alleyways

Heads down
Thumbs blurring
Above digital letters
On bright screens.
They
Collectively
Have no expressions
They, collectively
Have no visible emotion.

I lean against the brick front
Of a shoe store.
At the counter a woman taps a tablet.
A co-worker pauses in the doorway
To the back room
Bent over a device.
They
Collectively
Attend to business elsewhere
It having nothing to do
With shoes.

Traffic stops at the corner.
A teen driver in a new Ford
Brakes hard
Retrieving her cell phone
Upon which she quickly taps
A message
Exactly like the approaching bus
In which passengers
Collectively
Do the same.

Across the boulevard
Pedestrians mimic the actions 
Of others
Afflicted with the same virus.
They
Collectively
Submerge themselves in
Digital dialogues
The whole of which
Are shallow and meaningless.

Thousands
Millions of tap-tap-taps
All furious
Collectively
Vacuous.

Information is making us stupid
Rather than intelligent.

We
Collectively
Have turned our thumbs
Into the principal instrument
Of inquiry
Into a world meant for immersion
In things
Other than digital.

We are digging our graves with our thumbs.

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