No emails!

‘There are no emails in the box for you,

There are no emails,’ it said,

That message had sat on my page for days

Like a note for the newly dead,

I sat and stared at the vacant screen

Like a litany for the lost,

All of my friends were a cyber dream

As I soon found out, to my cost.

 

My thoughts went back for many a year

When the friends that I had were real,

The ones I’d meet in the supermart

The ones I could see, and feel,

The friends that I’d had of flesh and blood

Who had drifted into my past,

Did they sit and stare at an empty screen

And hope for a word at last?

 

When I was away they had written screeds

And sent by the penny post,

While I’d sit nights by a reading lamp

Replying, not all, but most,

We told each other of babies born,

Of fights we’d had with the boss,

And laughed together when I came home

Over dreams and the schemes we tossed.

 

But as life went on and the world got old

Our friends had drifted away,

While all of us got too busy then

With the fax and the phone to play,

We would close our doors when the day was done

And stare at a silent screen,

Would reach on out to the people there

Who lived in the cyber scene.

 

And we forged new friendships over the net

As we roamed in the world out wide,

We made us hundreds of friends out there

In towns and the countryside,

It was mind to mind, there was nothing else

No flesh to press, no kiss,

We knew that we’d never meet, no hugs

Our link, a computer dish!

 

I sit alone and I wait for you,

Your messages on the screen,

That make me feel I’m connected, though

The best I can do is dream,

For a single glitch in the i.s.p.

Will stop the electron flow,

And cut us off from our new-found friends

When the email box says, ‘No!’

 

David Lewis Paget

Reviews

[Dhaye]

How funny that I also do that when I emailed someone, I wait for long hours at the front of my computer monitor, just to be dismayed by the truth that he hasn't read my mail. Another day will be the same...wishing for an email on my screen.
That is what we call HOPE.

[roarke]

I don't know if I've mentioned it before, I hate technology, I'm a sworn Luddite. The very fact that the virtual world has grown to run neck and neck with the real gravitational world I feel is a definite causes for concern. In another light, true friends are friends in both worlds. Email is fine with me, it's cell phones I rail against...

[Holly Mason]

well if ever you have an electron flow problem...I will send a letter
what will the now a days kids do that is the question just sit and stare blankly
wondering what is an envelope?hahah this was a cool write on an up to date topic
thank you much for sharing

[Kenilo Kent]

Why, this is True poetry. I am learning a lot from you, a lot about myself, and I aspire to learn more. Soulful art! Thank you soo much for sharing Sire!

[K. D. Kromminga]

I find the juxtaposition between age old lyrical style and the information age concepts quite amusing and I wonder if I was supposed to be amused? Maybe it is silly that we expect to replace all the age old acquaintances and friendships we gather in life with safer online only relationships. It doesn't matter if they are 10 or even 100 times more than we could have expected in real life as far as quantity, I think that it is only on a rare occasion that they even approach the same quality. Yet even those few quality online relationships will quickly fade away if we lose whatever tenuous links that we shared with those individuals. Are our lives really too busy to "come out and play" once in while? Well done as usual, David.

[Becky C Strukamp]

This pretty much sums up the events surrounding emails

[HaleythePoet]

This is exactly how I felt when I moved away to college...

[Jack...]

isn't that the truth? very cool sir, you have captured our lives in a few short verses.

[Marc Marlon Villaflor]

"So sweet, touching poem" Life is changing...our reach is expanding...but nothing can replace...a friend in a flesh...you can hugs and kissed...spending your time together...wishing things will be forever...and ever...a real friend.