The intermediary and the subject have fused

Into a person without blood ,

One perceived with eyes tilted down.

This other is me from far away

This other is you on the flat screen

Worn on your arm

To push away the world

To make you believe

You are not alone.

It is a way you have come to deal with terror-

The terror of the Void,

The terror of the foreshadowed.

So you dress up in distraction

To keep it at bay

Pay the Electronic Vampire

To keep you in its magnetic graces,

A blip in the atmosphere in sync

With all the friends you don’t know.

And you get sucked cleanly into this

Semblance of personhood.

What is left of being when

Everything can be denied by

A slight pressure?

Who are you if you can be anyone

And not be anyone real?

We do not need each other today

As long as we can go through

The motions instead, the body

now functioning on remote control in

This realm of the facile, a quicksand

In which we sink muttering banalities.

We have been taken over by a crafty

Master, who makes us think we

Are winning when we are losing

Almost everything.