by Roderick Deacey
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Check your phone— it’s full of messages, all are saying check your phone. Check your creek— it keeps on rising, so do temperatures, the tundra’s melting, ice floes are melting, ice caps are melting. It appears that ice is getting scarcer. Check your freezer— it’s full of polar bears! That’s not funny, they are homeless, so are penguins. Check your oceans— coral’s dying, sea-weed’s dying, whales are dying, fish are dying, even octopi are saying bye-bye. Sea’s full of plastic— that can’t feed us. What’s going on here? Check your phone— it’s full of fascism, it’s caught a virus, it’s caught fanaticism, anti-Constitutional Christian nationalism. The leading candidate has set a camping date to rehouse us vermin soon as he is back in, billionaires back him, better believe him! Hey, great-grandad, those Nazis you fought— they’re back again. Check your phone— it’s bleeding bargains, don’t buy bargains, but buy a bunch of solar chargers. And download books— many, many books— for long, dark evenings. Are they coming? What do Boy Scouts say? Be prepared! But first, download this handy volume: "Edible Plants for Eating; How to Find Them." It’ll help you forage in field and forest— the hunter-gatherer diet, you may have to try it! Check your phone! Computer projections predict who’s winning— no one’s winning! We’re all sad losers, no cause for mirth on screwed-up Earth. The Washington Post confirms we’re toast, The New York Times asks “It’s really that time?” CNN says start again, while Fox whines Biden should have known. I wrote The Guardian— they just groaned. As for M-S-N-B-C, they say truth will set us free— that’s not proven to be true… so now, what should you do? You know, don’t you? Check your phone!
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Roderick Deacey recently discovered his bio had been replaced by instructions on how to turn himself in. He remembers regularly performing beat poetry with bass-player and drummer. He also remembers sending poems to literary magazines and occasionally having some published. He has decided not to turn himself in but to turn in a few spare poems instead.
Really well done. Pulls the reader through -- stanza by stanza -- to the end. The construction of the poem actually mirrors the hypnotic quality of online obsessive reading. Thank you.
Excellent! We should all pay attention…