If Lord Byron could speak

(A lone voice whispers)

Is poetry a dying art-form in the twenty-first century

Does this new generation just want images and memes

To be their only norm

Don't they want to know the beauty of creating a new thing

That might be emotionally worn

A beautiful invisible locket that may help them find catharsis

And through Poetry Genesis to truly transform

In fifty or a hundred years

Will poetry simply be a mystical discipline

Known only to shamans and mystics

As the current society kneels before unusual and insidious technology

For just about everything

Will the new generations be less inclined to create thoughts onto paper or just somewhere

Will the repeated vaccination cycles 

From birth potentially dum them down

So the burning passions

Dwelling buried deep within their souls can never speak

Will a technocrat's dream of a neverending dystopia

Lull them to sleep

To keep them in bondage like the old pharaohs in Egypt

To be obedient slaves who are emotionally and spiritually perpetually weak

Copyright John Duffy