To The TV Viewers You're Just a Stain

To The TV Viewers You're Just a Stain by Emily

All that remained was a stain on the pavement

No more news helicopters flying overhead

No more breaking headlines, they cut to commercial

No more jaws of life, prying open your mid-sized sedan

Just a tow truck dragging away your car

An ambulance fleeing

With your plastic cocooned body

Broken glass and debris

And that angry red stain

But I wonder if you were really a person like me

Or just another casual casualty on TV

How much life was in you?

Would you hug a stranger if they were crying?

Were you allergic to peanuts or shellfish?

Did you floss your teeth every night before bed?

Did you leave behind a widowed lover?

Did you believe in god?

I’ll offer up a few minutes of silence

And make up a memory of you in my mind

Swinging away in a park at age five

With ketchup stains on your jacket

And threadbare patches on the knees of your jeans

Then allow thoughts of you

To fade

Like the stain

Internet Age Indifference

Internet Age Indifference by Emily

Internet age telepathy

Detonates a peppering of culture bombs

Simultaneously

A child lacing up sneakers with ineptness

A tidal wave devouring coastline with relish

Consuming livelihood down to the bone,

Then sucking out the marrow with watery lips

A mother is cradling her ash-skinned infant

In famine-weakened arms she rocks him

Keeping time to an invisible pendulum

Swinging slowly, so desperately slowly

Down to the last labored breath

Of westernized dismissal

Internet age apathy

Hibernates soundlessly amidst pixels

And trite advertisements of fad diets

An old woman stares at a glossy panoramic screen

Waiting expectantly for the final loop

To slide between the bumbling fingers of her first grandchild

She sings her praise to the blank screen

Powering down her lap top

Like folding a newspaper

She strides into her kitchen

Humming “How Great Thou Art” while nibbling

On a peanut butter cookie

The crumbs fall unacknowledged to the heated linoleum floor