data

the bigger the data
the harder the snow of it
you smother under
     decisions
     not your own
     decisions about you
     and what you will or will not
     consume
walls and
computer architecture
cheap hard-drive partitions
between rooms of data
gather you like chaff
and sift
     you into these rooms
     every click a fragment
     of your life in a universe
     of sparks and bytes
the distance
you have crossed
in hops and data packets
the infinity of analytics
     in which
     you are deconstructed and
     reconstituted as your own appetite
your own
desperate hunger
stripped back
     until
     you are only
     the harvest of
     your aching need

© BH, 2020

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The first of two poems about the electronic world . Data harvesting. As if we were only the raw material of a virtual threshing machine. We are garnered, like grain, while our husks accumulate, by-products, waste. We are led to believe something essential is retained but he whole of us is already gone and we are left, incomplete.