Viz - 2

Today, distanced by our screens,
the here and now is an after-image;
time and place is a kind of memory
we carry as if it frees us.

So liberated, released, so dazzled,
dazzling in our brightness, we fly
like exotic birds, into imagined paradise.

The clothes on our backs are day-glow yellow
(no-one is wearing camouflage any more)
and we walk unnoticed in gaudy rags.

We are all hi-viz now, reflecting daylight back
to every passing face, heads still bowed,
still reverential, our vicarious lives unwinding.

We know our place as we are known by it,
mesmerized, pixelated, points in a matrix,
wirelessly streamed data, known by what we need,
our secret desires, the intimacy of our interactions,
by everything we believe we must consume.

Everyone is someone now
though we are invisible to ourselves.

© BH, 2023

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Another split poem. As if two halves make a whole. I thought so but I wanted to use a moderate amount of text for the illustration. So the poem, Viz appears as Viz 1 and Viz2.

It's a game of two halves, they say. No-one thinks it's all over. Till it is…