How do we all get on together?
How is the issue of distance offset?
How do we each stay in touch?
Of course, there’s the Internet.
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With this we make bookings and financially transact.
We research, self-educate and shop.
We can look at what the world has to offer;
With updates that never stop.
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But further to its practical use
Of updating ourselves in real time,
There is another darker side;
Still only in its prime.
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It moves into another world,
Including the shadowy place of text-dating.
Of late night computers that glow in dark rooms;
Of typing and sending and waiting.
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Are there really such things as Internet lovers,
With pictures and words on a screen?
Are they each really making a friend,
Or just buying sight unseen?
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Are people actually meeting,
With only a mouse’s click?
Can their lives come so easily together?
Can they really bond that quick?
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Or are there keyboards out there that stalk?
There owners cunning and knowing
There are lonely people in cloistered bedrooms,
With black coffee keeping them going?
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Can they trust and become infatuated,
With sweet words and a pixeled face?
Could this be the partner they’ve been searching for?
Can they be sure that this is the case?
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Or are they just looking for someone to listen,
Or someone who really cares?
Are they searching for acceptance from strangers,
Or just someone to hear their prayers?
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Are they just sending out random signals,
Or looking for the meaning of life,
Or rambling through sad fantasies,
Or escaping some personal strife?
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For those who’ve lost touch with reality,
Are social networks some sad masquerade?
With senders making false profiles and claims
With ploys designed to persuade?
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Are they trapped in some strange dimension?
Are they merely deprived of sleep?
Will the click of a button solve all of their woes?
Do their lives just need a clean sweep?
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Do bloodshot eyes blink at a flickering screen?
Has the neck developed a crick?
Has the wrist showed signs of RSI?
Has the face taken on a tick?
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Are they playing with words in cyberspace,
With their curtains drawn tightly closed?
Attempting to achieve some frail intimacy,
Not knowing if real names are disclosed.
Is it an outlet for creativity,
Or an addiction to the Internet drug?
Is it a withdrawal from real society,
By sweeping life under the rug?
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Or is it all about zeros and ones
That buzz through some distant server,
And the flowing of tiny electrical currents
That would baffle the average observer?
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This is a wondrous technology,
But what comes after the Net.
Has it been secretly invented,
Or simply not thought of yet?
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Let us hope it is based on human needs;
That hopes of closeness are met.
That it brings souls more genuinely together,
Beyond the Internet.