Carnation

A poem inspired by the slam poetry style of Sarah Kay

(Horobik, n.d.)

(This poem can be used in advertising as an ad against depression caused by social media, or in schools to get kids active, or to create awareness of the effects of technology)

We live in a world constantly wanting our attention, the very thing we don’t give it. We dip our fingertips in another world, a ‘bigger’ world, one more worthy of our time, our minutes, our hours, our days, we give our lives away to this hand held world occupying our fingers as they type longer, drawing our minds in until we forget what we’re doing, are we sitting or standing, confusing our thoughts from memories, to ideas to nothing at all. Though enchanting in form and tempting in character there is so much it is not., so much it cannot…

Replace the feeling of grass between our toes with the touch of a screen, or the adapting colours of the ocean with pictures that don’t do it justice, it cannot imitate the feeling of the wind as it moves around and through our form or the feeling of bark as we run our hands down it. It does not know the smell of a rose or the stench of a fire, nor can it replace the sound of the birds with a million sounds higher or the taste of the food with a colour coordinated picture depicting it. It is not a world where your senses run free, it is a prison, a place you go and return having nothing to show for where you’ve been, except bruises and bumps from the run that exhausted you, the run to to savour in the pretend, pretend happiness, pretend beauty, pretend reality, this is what you have resorted to.

Because the real world, is one you can taste, hear, feel, smell AND see. One which does not flash or bing for attention while leaving  you feeling empty, one that takes your time and gives you a story, a poem, a feeling, a completing of your soul and the trees, the trees extend their welcome almost as high as the stars that shine brighter and brighter hoping to draw you in, almost as proudly as the mountains boast of their magnificence while the hills invite your mind to wander somewhere you’ve never been. So I beg of you, if not for me do it for your starving soul, there is so much more to a day than a another hundred pictures of yourself you don’t even like , there is more to a minute than a conversation where feelings are replaced by something cartoon-like, there is more to a second than the doubt you feel looking at another person’s perfect pretend. You are alive, and this life wants all of you until the end.

 

Reference:

Horobik, K. (n.d.). Carnation. [image] Available at: https://za.pinterest.com/pin/528258231265795266/ [Accessed 29 May 2016].