I Miss People

I’m not speaking about certain individuals like a lost love or the fatality of friends

I mean the sincerity of strangers threaded throughout our thumbprints

Those unsung spirits

Heroines and heroes sans egos but with in-erasable emotions

I miss someone wearing their heart on their sleeves and instead of shooing them away, I would roll mine up in turn and say,

Let’s see how we can work with this

 

But instead, I work to brighten the smiles of people on a screen

Chained to a desk, the only heartbeat I feel is the pulsing of the mouse underneath my hand

The only connections I see are through a glass screen into a false reality

I miss hellos that led to handshakes and handshakes that end in leaving hugs, and all of that spectacular serendipity of connectivity in between

 

Give me a dive bar where I may go swimming in the hearts of man

Unchain me from the chain restaurants that source their livelihood from the masses

Give me someone local and lean, whose meat is juicy like their stories.

 

It’s no wonder that en entire generation of people connecting online oftentimes feel themselves a little bit disconnected

A poke is a joke and a like is like a fleeting lark

Momentarily engaging but all of this social interaction is ultimately leading to absolute isolation

And there is no sharing in the longevity of loneliness

 

While we spend hours cramming the best parts of ourselves onto the Internet

We’re leaving the focal point of ourselves back in fundamental fibers

Those beautiful inconsistencies of humans

That recognition of a counterpoint in another soul

But instead we counter online arguments

Facebook battle war zones littered with text instead of empty bullet casings

Fueling the hate with blank boxes of ammunition

Igniting fires we are trying so desperately to escape within ourselves

Reignited by the artificial flames of the media and the ‘other’

 

Even the tinder we have today cannot seem to spark because it will never be able to match that feeling of going weak in the knees

LOL no longer an abbreviation but a code of letters standing for the idea of laughter

But there’s not shortening like the shortness of breath from laughing so hard you cannot stop

With Buzzfeed ringing in my ear like the banality of busy bee

I sit at my desk, my fingers type out messages I yearn to speak aloud

My eyes scan pictures I wish­­ to witness

My heart longs to experience it with humankind instead of the holograms of the herd

 

This petty poem will never placate the palpable nature of people

This pandering of the populous will never play out the way we planned it

Until we fight for the friendships we’ve forsaken for Facebook

Until we stop idolizing instant individuals.

Until we stop teetering on the text of tweets

We will remain in our attempts to recreate this rapturous reality we’ve tried so hard to replicate

Until the only thing that lingers are the hallowed hearts harboring hardened hardships

Ultimately pining away for that palpable perfection of people.