Airbrushed Ashley’s puffed lips
ask to be my Meta-friend, daily.
Josh-bot phones me on the hour
about my Medicare A and B.
A.I.’s six-digit hands scramble history
in Pixar-colored newsfeeds
where my friends used to be.
And, junk pollsters survey if I’m mad
enough to donate more and more.
This old historian
and humanitarian
vacillates
between setting the record,
comment-by-comment,
or retreating
to a good book and
the dog on my knee.
But I know isolation,
like soulless contact,
breeds despair,
and Nero fiddles
with tariffs
while America burns
out.
So, I join the struggle,
to write
something real,
wondering
if the algorithms
will expose
or bury me.
seeing god naked 