Do You Remember?

Do you remember when life was about living?
Interconnectivity of human beings, 
collectives and storytelling by campfire. 
Hunter gatherers providing for friend and stranger alike, 
for there were no strangers. 

Do you remember the days when we used to be?
A body with a soupcon of soul. 
Conversing in our evening times 
by the light of a paraffin lamp.  

Do you remember when we once were tribes?
When wars were settled with a handshake and a trade?
When violence was too bloody, too real, too futile. 
When we used the resources around us, 
and those we had not, we did without. 

Do you remember?
No, me neither. 
All I recall is dank front rooms in Dolby surround
as floating ghosts flitted between their own dimensions and mine. 
They called themselves ‘family’ but they were unfamiliar. 
All I recall is imagination drowned out by the noise
of cheap, made-in-taiwan toys, inhuman plastic;
television the nurturing compost in which my roots were planted. 
It would make a shit movie.  
It would make a good book, but it would go unpublished
as English literature classes of the future
flick their kindles to the next page of the WAG spit-roast saga.  
Paperbacks watch on from shelves at the back, 
‘The Scarlet Pimpernel’ yellowed with age and green with envy.  
Crooners sing soulful ballads via medium of electronic elevator muzak speakers
while genetically engineered holograms, look the same, sound the same
are propped up at the top of the charts by carbon copies. 
Gawp at the latest cartoon craze, drawn not by man but mouse, 
in fully rendered 3D (maybe even 4D or 5D, that’d be a gimmick).
A million and one ways to distract the mind.
After all, there’s no profit in letting us remember
we’re only human. All of us.