Water. Water everywhere.
Nevermind that it already owns two-thirds of the Earth,
It has to invade our homes and depreciate their worth.
To some, water is a privilege, a hard-sought resource
To others, it is a menace, a ruthless unstoppable force
To Australia it is both, a blessing and a curse,
One day praying for rain, the next that it won’t get worse
Lives disrupted, homes destroyed, power lines downed
Destruction abounds when water swamps the ground.
News feeds abuzz with coverage of flood after flood
Unveiling the fates of communities lost in water and mud
But one thing doesn’t change, a vast and incorporate thing
The Web spins on, oblivious of those who’ve ceased to ping
As distant users converse and immerse in frames and games
As celebrities tweet rumours and comments erupt in flames
As video servers serve the masses their comically cute cats
Breaking news cuts the noise and interrupts the spats
Prompting, perhaps, a pause
As viewers look up from their claws
“Severe Weather in Australia, Earthquake in Nepal,
Executions in Indonesia, and what will you do about it all?”
Maybe we pray; send empathic thoughts their way
Maybe we impart finances to aid those who yet stay
Whichever case, each new day leaves the past behind
Those of us unaffected return to the daily grind
A disaster strikes, a disaster hikes
A sympathetic post gets a thousand likes
Yet the world goes on spinning, rain or shine
Tribulations discarded as they’re shared online
What remains is a graveyard of all things we forget
Because life is just a distraction to the immortal Internet.
Sometimes I feel like the internet is this great, eternal entity detached from the rest of the world and from the happenings of life. This poem tries to convey that.
It’s not meant to be insensitive to the aforementioned events or equate the execution of eight drug traffickers to the deaths of thousands of innocents in an earthquake, but rather quite the opposite. The average person on the internet is exposed to these different events in much the same way – some mentions on social media, or articles on popular websites. Big or small, colossal or trivial, such events are reported for all to peruse at their leisure. While it’s convenient to hear about recent events around the world, seeing all that information has a number of unintended effects. We’re assailed with a barrage of information, much of it sensationalised, and it desensitises us to the human factor, especially when it concerns people around the other side of the world.
In light of the recent flooding here in Queensland I’m reminded that in most parts of the world, if people even read about these flash floods and the resulting casualties, their probable reaction will be little more than a shrug accompanied by a pang of sympathy. That’s the internet for you. Is it a bad thing? Is the price of readily available news updates worth the cost of our desensitisation to them? I really don’t know.
But it took me three hours to get home and about five transfers, and occupying my time by writing a poem seemed more appealing than looking at all the destruction fly past outside.
Observations 