Social Wilderness

~
I wish I could convey myself to you more adequately
than just words, or sounds, or light, or even touch-
and the reason is no different to your wish to convey meaning to me;
or to another; or to everyone.
It burns doesn’t it;
in the hollow of our chests and the ashen pits of our stomachs?

I know you feel it too-
that absence of connection;
that intimate reciprocation of being.
I know because you post your attempts to be understood on a worldwide stream of sex and status updates;
And you share reflections of yourself from the end of a stick
So that people will validate your existence
and call you beautiful, and wonderful, and amazing, and all the things that nature takes for granted-
And when you’ve had your fill, you will post another attempt at acceptance,
And people like me- who desire the idea of you-
will click ‘like’
and you will have achieved nothing,
And I will have received nothing,
And we will continue this charade until it has lost all the meaning that it didn’t have;
and the hollow in our chests,
and the ashen pits of our stomachs
will still burn for something real,
Something true,
Something that cannot be quantified or liked, or depreciated with an emoticon;
But rather something that can be shared, and only shared-
For that is what understanding is-
A shared truth.
And that’s what I wish I could convey to you more adequately than any of the billboards of ego that we piss against,
Or the thumbnail processions of youthful bodies and perfumed beards,
And babies who suckle now on the teat of technology;
While the frontier of being truly human slowly fills with the wilderness of our longing to be…