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THE REALITY OF ILLUSION
I read an article the other day.
It said a growing number of teens
Sleep with cellphones under their pillows at night
To check their messages as soon as they get up.
And it seemed to me
This must be enormously confusing for the tooth fairy
Who once claimed sole control of the under-pillow domain,
A perfect opportunity for the entrepreneuring
Screen saver-developer for a new icon:
A tooth with a red line through it, perhaps,
To say sorry, no tooth here tonight.
At Christmas, bedtime used to be a good time
To put out milk and cookies for Santa,
Knowing that by morning the cookies would be gone
And presents would be waiting under the tree.
Now NORAD lets us use the computer
To track Santa's trip around the globe
And better judge the precise time for cookie placement
Before the presents arrive.
It used to be that escapism meant leaving the house,
Sitting for a few hours in a darkened theater,
Being arm's-length voyeurs to worlds too different
From the everyday ones in which most people live.
Now people spend countless hours at home
In front of screens of ever-increasing (or decreasing) dimensions
Developing avatars for life in virtual worlds
Where they can slay dragons, shoot enemies, be heroes,
While Hollywood makes films about men loving computers
And humans in the lab make more life-like robots.
And those teens, when they awake,
"Speak" in abbreviated text punctuated with emoticons,
Decorated, at times, by those modified yellow smiley faces,
While Facebook alters the happiness quotient
In messages from their ever-growing list of "friends."
And so starts another day
In which technology makes all our illusions
Seem so real.
Poem "The Reality of Illusion" © 2014 Dorothy A. Birsic.
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