Starring on the big screen
Used to dominate young dreams
Super-sizing them for mass consumption
Today, celluloid immortality miniaturizes
So five minutes ago
Small screens test us
As we flail miserably
In a feudal limbo
‘Tween
Puffed up images
Flickering about
And atrophied soles
Going nowhere fast
No longer facing
A true converse
Of penetrating I’s
Present minds
And supple lips
Flush of heart
Given to a musing gesture
Deflating kings
And giving commoners rise
Surpassing hands shaking
And awe that follows
Neither settling
For collapsing our highest hopes
Nor minute fits
As souls meet the street
And welcoming nature
Banishing the might he
Of lesser woulds
And inspiring fresh heirs
To real feat
Baring our soles
Grounded in realty for all
A shared fete
A fare commune
Wear each mourning
Met lightly
With a celebration of the hearts
No longer idle worship of images
Every won an original
Not merely deference
Bland tolerance
Or thumbs down devolution
But powered by appreciation
You can bank on
A currency turning led into goaled
A redeeming alchemy
The most handsome ransom
For our ugly whirled
A watery swell so grave
Or a cowering inferno
Mything the point
With such hocus pocus
And uncounted allusions
To awe that would suitor
A befitting size
That matters
And keeping it
Reel
Never having too obsess
What’s the catch
This poem is a call to more real and human-scale relationships. Social media technology, celebrity, and widespread shallow images of ourselves projected to others is robbing us of better ways of being. We can easily be overwhelmed by images of celebrity, status, and wealth, tempting vainglorious dreams. We can easily feel inadequate and too small by a juggernaut of Photoshopped images and word processed personalities. Humans are best suited to face-to-face relationships. As such real-time, real-world relationships are edged out by other more nominal relationships our humanity and satisfaction suffers. Nobody wants to be multi-tasked, no matter the purported claims of efficiency. Long-term, face-to-face, human relationships better reflect the awesome depth, complexity, and eccentricity of humans. It is by far the best place for healthy intimate relationships to thrive. Such relationships also keep us humble, rooted in reality. I see humility as being right-sized, not too big or too small. Perhaps the greatest threat to humility is technology and institutions which depersonalize human interactions. Powering up through technology and institutions is a powerful temptation to become too big, overpowering human scales with impersonal agency and concentration of power among elites. This is dehumanizing. This creates persistent structural temptations to value things and concepts/ideologies over actual people. The seductive drive of scaling up power disconnects us from our own humanity and the humanity of others. I suspect that Western civilization is far-flung from any balance between being rooted in healthy, human-scaled relationships and powering up to “get things done.” Further, I suspect that there may be a nearly proportional relationship between getting things done and getting humans done. May we keep things real and not finish off humans. I kind of like them!
