Member Poem

I.
The screen glows, a pale moon in the dark,
Illuminating my face like a corpse underwater.
Notifications ping, tiny deaths,
Each one a reminder of my digital absence.
I am a ghost in the machine,
A wisp of data, forgotten and unread.
II.
In the kitchen, the smart fridge hums,
A white monolith of plenty and waste.
Its screen flashes recipes I'll never make,
While inside, leftovers grow mold,
Like memories festering in my mind.
I open the door, cold air rushes out,
Chilling the void where my appetite used to be.
III.
Social media feeds scroll endlessly,
A modern Sisyphus, I push my thumb upward,
Only for the content to reset, refresh, repeat.
Faces I know, yet don't, flash by,
Their lives curated, filtered, perfected.
Mine lies shattered, a broken mirror
Reflecting only fragments of what could have been.
IV.
The AI assistant listens, always listens,
To my sighs, my screams, my silences.
"I'm sorry, I didn't catch that," it says,
As if any machine could truly understand
The algorithm of despair that runs through my veins,
Binary code replacing blood, ones and zeros
Where hope and fear once flowed.
V.
Outside, drones buzz like mechanical bees,
Pollinating the world with surveillance and paranoia.
The sky, once wide and wild, now seems
A grid of invisible signals and data streams.
Even the clouds are stored somewhere,
Our memories and dreams uploaded,
But I am offline, disconnected, forgotten.
VI.
In the bathroom, smart scales await,
Ready to quantify my shrinking existence.
Numbers flash – weight, BMI, body fat –
As if I could be reduced to mere metrics,
My worth measured in gigabytes and followers.
I step off, vanishing from its sensors,
Wishing I could disappear so easily from life.
VII.
Night falls, but the world never darkens.
Screens glow in every room, every pocket.
Sleep eludes me, chased away by blue light
And the fear of missing out on a life
I'm no longer living. In the digital twilight,
I am neither awake nor asleep, neither here nor there,
A quantum state of modern misery.
VIII.
Dawn breaks. I rise, a reluctant phoenix,
From sheets tangled like corrupted code.
Another day of emails, likes, and shares awaits,
The performative dance of the digital age.
I log in, I post, I exist – or do I?
In this brave new world of bits and bytes,
I am but a glitch, a human error,
Longing for a connection that no cable can provide.