Sometimes Social Media Becomes My Escape From the Daily Labors of Hard Work: A Poem

by | Oct 7, 2020 | Blogs, Spirituality

Social Media Mirage

On the screen
Masses of images
Saturating and staining
Are seen.
Pleasure and pain.
Emotion
A potion.
Moments crystallized
Mindlessly molding
My mind,
Morphing my imagination
To desire
To imitate:
What I can only see now
But don’t have.

Through different feeds
Or streams
The life which I see
And to which I respond
Cannot be.
A mirage
Thirsty, I reach
Evaporating.

At my desk
In a daze.
The life I’ve seen
Echoing,
Only to return
To the daily grind,
Alone.

The life that actually touches my body:
Brushing my teeth,
Cleaning,
Working,
Eating,
Planning,
Emailing,
Mowing,
Writing,
Unseen.

Time and time again
I’m tempted
To escape
To a place
Of set up
Satisfactions.
Staged stories.
Selective shots.
Filtered photos
Fake future hopes.

But I’m always abandoned there.
Led on
And then let off
By that adulterous affair.

Save me God.
Bring me back
To you, alive.

Burn away
The mirage,
So I can see
Who you want me to be

I see someone,
A stranger.
We talk.
His cool green eyes,
Kind.

And snap
I’m brought back
To a forgotten fact
Not fiction.

Real relationship,
The realm of my religion.

This one man
A mystery among many
to be revealed
I am certain
Shatters the stage I’ve set.

I am led.
By You
Playing
In another’s eyes,
True.
Now tilled
I’m ready
For what is real.
Roots for fruit faithfully produced.

I will love the world.

-//-

Photo by mikoto.raw from Pexels

cwilliamssj

Chris Williams, SJ

cwilliamssj@thejesuitpost.org   /   All posts by Chris

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