Virtualization

Virtualization

Is a tradeoff:

Not a bad one for computer systems,
But not a great one for people made of meat,
Designed to breathe the same air
And warm the same space
As other people made of meat,
To sweat in summer
And shiver in winter
And love and be loved in person, in the meat.

In my virtualized world
I seek the love of those
Who cannot, will not love me back.
I span time and space and culture
To proliferate trivialities,
To consume carefully curated slices of friends,
To sample the fashionable fears and rage and ambitions
Of a perishing world.

 
How much better to keep my head down
And my eyes open here and now?

To seek connection to flesh and blood where I am,
To see the virtual world for what it is:
A neat trick, but ultimately
An empty simulacrum,

A pale imitation,

An overpromising,

Underdelivering

Distraction from the world God made.

All Saints

For Leslie

I remember the last time we spoke
At the Whole Foods in Cool Springs
And I knew death was at work in you,
But I could hardly see it through your radiant light.

You read me a few poems from the book
You would just barely live to see in print
And I promised to preorder it
And you listened to some of my poems, too,
And were so generous and kind in your comments
And now you have permanently breached the veil
And I’m here serving out the rest of my own death sentence.

But I smile to picture how you’ll welcome me –
How you’ll welcome us all –
As we trickle in by ones and twos
Or flood in all at once with a shout and a trumpet
And it will be just like that
February day in Lancaster
When you smiled so wide and warm up front
And eagerly told us of all the joys that waited.