The Collection

Year zero facing fresh
web-crawled emotes enmesh
and social trigonometry
keeps your electric eye on me
my space-face close at hand
wasting into stateful sands
shrinking beside viral memes
condensed down to aether streams
falling into pocketed file
asleep in manicured profile.

We unbecome something human
scrolling listless in pale lumens
cocoon of metadata metamorphosis
swallowed in yawning narcosis.
Prized old badges of tarnished brass
or pretty roses neath dusty glass
culled from the cream of selection
a prize for our cloud collection

of heads shrunken through compression
captured in cartoon impression
strung up like lights on our timeline
clinging to blue-and-white lifeline
visited under drooping view
illumed by wan, waxy hue
our monuments greet blank stares
across blinding cyclops glares.

Here come our birthdays again
weeping from our walls and then
heralding tireless tide of years
highwater marks tallying fears
that roses under glass
could never really last
that angst unworded will bend to norm
mutely dining on proper form.

Thus the gear slips, novel teeth worn
vanishing like spectral shreds torn
discarded like an old rug
dismissed with a blameless shrug.

Yet this hungry wall is left undecked
there're always more heads to collect
in which unvoiced hopes meekly inflect
that, this time, we will somehow connect.