Modern love
Plays out  
All over Facebook
And the social feeds
Not quite Shakespeare
It’s more Love Island themed
It started with a kiss
And ended with disease
True romance
Cozy nights in
A three course meal
Just for you
By him
Catching feels
***** flutters
Where digital love begins

Smitten kittens
Tagging each other
In the latest memes
A selfie before
The cinema screen
Holiday snaps
“A pic of my man
I love how he naps x”
Status updates
Painted on the wall
From single
To a relationship
In no time at all

Not quite Notting Hill
Just another IG Story
Eastenders drama
Is social media glory
Posting again
At 3 in the morning
The lies and deceit
Not so discreet
Posting the screenshots
And read receipts
“U ok ***
Wot happened
Babe DM me **”

Love to air your ***** laundry  
And filthy sheets
Content’s like clockwork
When a new lover’s
On the scene
Breaking up in style
Part of the routine
For an audience
That can’t help but stare
I’m obsessed
When a post is shared
No need for the town square
We’re all living
Vicariously through
You and your private affairs

The news is a c#%&
That son of a b@#$!
They don't give a f$%!
about talking s&#@
That girl is a s!@$
and that dude's a d!@&
But I blame this boll@&$s
On tabloid pr!@&s

So many more blue eyes in the world
Scrolling through their rolodex
Consuming dopamine one thumb up at a time
The slang is commonplace, replacing native tongues
The hair is the same on every dumb limbering drone
Conversations sound like e-speak read aloud in an open mic
Except that the audience participates in every false interaction
As plastic as the shoreline after spring break.

Thoughts are collective in a hive mind
Crowdsourced down to their brow line
Manufactured obedience in obediently serving for that last drip
Dopamine drips in the form of a click.

Awkward silence on the subway,
If it’s not on TikTok, they can’t say
Words shift into a balloon animal display
Twisted in knots, unable to hear clarity
But can walk the dog like a yo-yo trick if it bottled sincerity
Because these blue eyes are strained and strange
Locked into a perpetual gaze into the bottomless aether
Searching for the next fix.
Dopamine drips in the form of a click.

Cliques of cliches
And Temu personaliites
A carbon copy of a copy copying copies of something copied.
And the beat goes on like an arrhythmic heart
No worry for when the pressure rises
They’d rather have a stroke than see the OH in Cheerios
Because it’s not sweet enough to find the ordinary
When you can dine on lucky charms and chase rainbow fairies
See they’re stuck, them, and they, ze or zur -
Needing that dopamine drip from the clicks

And as I watch devolution
These zombies are tethered to their thought pollution
Parasitic in their dissolution
Walking these streets with their strings tugged by the beat of filters
I know I could never be a screen ****** apparatchik.

Look at you, you lost animal.
You tear down anything that has a chance of being good,
then sit in the shadow of what can only be bad,
and tell me the world worries you.

Horizon of heard words bring
feelings
new and relieving
receiving
messages from myself
to be passed to someone else.

Like birth I breathe my
first lesson
in learning a new obsession.
A whole new world
completed by curiosity
and only in generosity of voice
was I shown the choice we each make
to hide and to fake
to fear that we are
no more than animals with complex speech
and we reach desperately to find
some notion that we are tools
but in truth we are without rules
and can experience as much as we are willing to believe.

The people I see, the young and the free
They dance and they sing in blissful retreat.
Their lives are a sample of pure liberty
And mine an example of firmly fixed feet

I grew up alone, in this I am blessed
I know of the darkness and it knows me best
My friends I found waiting beside the far lights
I wouldn't have seen them without those dark nights.

I feel like the fuse has already burnt.
The engine backfired, old meat past expired
I feel like a liar, pretending to be, pretending to see
what it is they believe they are doing
with their endless consumption and moving
their only function, save but to breathe
is to make our lives harder, or enforce beliefs.

The reality is, its in human nature
to skip the sad memories of our bad behaviour
and think of the times when we looked our best
convince ourselves that we're flawless and blessed.

I won't have such good memories, for I hid in the dark.
Shade like and skinny, and spared any romance.
It's hard to see evil that's basking in light.
So wait for the night and they'll dance, and they'll melt, and you'll see,
those good memories weren't made by people like them.
They were made by people like me.

Broken, Flawed, Imperfect.
People live among us.

Perfect,flawless, immaculate.
People live half alive.

As they try anything and everything.
To sell you a dream.
To gleam and shine.

To light up the screens.
Of teens who see.
No harm in the dream.

That being anything less.
Than them is wrong.

You have to shine.
Like they do.
Sell fake news.

Start a trend.
Make an impression.

Just don't be flawed.
In the way you speak.

Don't look broken.
Hide those eye bags underneath.

Your hair can't be imperfect.
Not a strand out of place.

Smile,gleam and shine.
The way you were always.
Influenced to.

Not a foot out of place.
Otherwise we won't allow you.
In this space.

Now fake a smile.
Won't you?

I don't know what you were doing,
But you look like a dog
That just stole the roast
From right off the table!
Actually, I know it,
I'm just giving it a better face.

In that mercy, is it grace?
Is it blessing? Are you saved?

Anchors like weights,
Writs from writers acting
Behind the curtains.
I fear they don't even know it's a play,
But they're aware there's stakes.
Whatever press representative
That today flirt nationally
Are riddled with stains.
Very few apart from the alternative,
Though they have well suffered
By those who are dependents.

Who is guilty? Who is judging?