Safe
A Stream of Consciousness Poem
What are the greatest hunters of our age doggedly pursuing?
Safety
Where do we feel safest, least in danger and most free?
Online
When did we cease to vacation next to volcanoes?
How did fleeing the world into glowing hallucinations become so bloody fashionable?
Achilles ached to lived as a smeared wretch in the dirt among the living
Rather than count out eternity as a hero in the inky quicksand of Hades
How free are those who dwell in a digital safe?
How many epics are they bound to get caught up in?
Falling in love with robots is pathological
But we will stop at nothing to make them irresistibly seductive
While we waddle wetly toward ignominious oblivion
What kind of culture teaches you to yearn for safety?
A culture that wants to keep you under wraps
Safe as an alabaster chamber pot
Tedious and soft and obedient
Deep in your desultory DoorDash doldrums
Not just a domesticated animal
A tired servant
Without dignity
Unable to spell outrage
Without automatic correction
Stay here, where it's safe
It's a safe, that kind of myth
A locking heuristic fiction
With an anesthetic lesson
When you are free, you are responsible
When you are safe, you are irresponsible
The fault lies elsewhere, in the dirty crowd of the world
You have things to download
Breathing, yawning, smelly, awkward
So random
The others and the world they keep screwing up
Will they ever learn?
Such warm, soft certainty
When you need only like and comment
Without doing anything worth liking or commenting upon
Invulnerable, in the chat but not of it, irony clad
A smirking oyster in a cybernetic shell
Taking notes from language talking to itself behind an ad
For the productivity gains promised by the integration
Of bionic bullshit artists and slithering slop slingers
Into our bland, analog lives and jobs and relationships
Oxymorons: greedy saint, wise tyrant, artificial intelligence
All technological revolutions have had regrettable casualties
They are as leaves in the tempest of power and wealth that approaches
Pay them no mind
You're safe, after all
Isn't that what matters most?
Never mind that your home is being pillaged by lusty suitors
Or that the bones of Elpenor rattle with impatient desire
Knowing that a decent burial is all that separates us from the swine
Stay here, you'll be fine
Sure, mediocrity is a luxury
Broccoli costs what a bridal gown once cost
Stream this documentary
Fasting is good for you
Eating out is such a hassle
Everyone delivers, now
Only Hermes delivered to Ogygia
The better to get the hero off his ass
Onto a raft and into the salt spray of life
Alluring sea nymphs and vengeful tridents
Only masked to get the better of your foes
Sure that restoring justice to your rocky backwater
Was more honorable than lotus eating
Unsafe
The greatest hunters of our age
Unworthy of the name
Since we leerily left the leaves
We have hunted dangerous life
The only diet we love
About the Creator
D. J. Reddall
I write because my time is limited and my imagination is not.
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Excellent work. Looking forward to reading more!
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Excellent storytelling
Original narrative & well developed characters
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Standing While Falling
Quotation from Friedrich Nietzsche "He who wrestles long with monsters should beware lest he himself become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you. Man is not destroyed by suffering, but by the meaning he makes of it."
By LUCCIAN LAYTH4 days ago in Critique
Comments (9)
Thus is so powerful. Filled with truths, yet we continue after reading for its already too late. we are doomed. The young to pay the price. Congrts to truth. Now i may be able to write one,
Good job! 👏👏
Congratulations and very well deserved!
irony clad-- love this
SO GREAT
Yes, Social Media and technology can be our poison if we let it. This piece makes you think about how we have taken advantage of technology, and how we put our trust in it, over tipping dangerous levels. It's a thoughtful piece of work.
Oh my word - this is a convicting, incisive, really brilliant piece - wandering through the many angles of our addicted, tech-addled age, while keeping a clear and powerful center. Incredible writing, D.J.! I want to sit with and return to this one...
Search amazing Work! It intertwines the myth of all and the dangers of this age perfectly. “Unable to spell outrage without automatic correction” was a wonderful burn. And the whole alabaster chamberpot metaphor was perfect.
This was a soaring diatribe against the modern age, made timeless with its smatterings of classical references and its masterful use of alliteration. This line "While we waddle wetly"? Your word choices imitate the action described so well. I felt like my tongue was waddling when it said it. I mean, this is deftly done in its purest form, I would say. I love it when you sneer at the world.