My Cobblestone Heart

Leave all cell phones
At home
No wireless
     Thumbs

Give me a street of dimpled stones
There I am young.

Let me walk out amongst the
    Apparitions of crinoline
And shawls
Frock coats, top hats
Even further back
   Below monasteries and their walls
With their bells and reliqueries
A winter sigh through the mortuaries
And from the men in cassocks.

What has modernity but given
But disconnect?
An illusion of screens bright and app-flecked
Emoticons for emotions and truncated
Words

Let me feel the length of day
Let me understand what I've heard and read
Before its deleted or Microsoft-filed away.

Sunlight and scenery
No devices to distract from all
God's greenery

And yes, a street with houses of stone and
Smoke-plumed
Chimneys

Where letters inside are treasured and written
In a century where one rarely cares about
Internet memes and adorable kittens.

All this clutter for weak and fidgety minds
I would leave it all without thought and expel a happy sigh

To pour myself into the unwired hours
Smell the sky and wait out the flowers
    To feel time like the pace of my heart
To never need a password to start my phone
(Am I alone in this?)

No broadband nor senseless blogging
No Tweets and online ad flogging

No latest news from somewhere else, nor studies and finds from
Superficial articles
Nor the latest scientific discovery about the binding of some
Unknown atomic particles

To let all be, to let all unfold
To search for a personal truth and enjoy the
    Moment's gold.

Below cornices, below gables walking, below buttresses flying
By roads, by doorways talking, to watch the carriages
Go by riding, to see the horses, beautiful and swift
    Not as ornaments of the snooty and rich.

Truly, and
Yet I know
This nostalgia is slightly romantic, if not slightly
Pedantic,
Yes, I recognizes its flaws

A previous time when and where churches ruled
And people lived uneducated and fooled under the thumb of despotic laws

But for every advance humanity as a supposed-whole makes
     There is still crime, greed and tyranny,
Various kind of abuse and hunger with its misery
And of course, the hand of fate.

Twenty-first century humans still remain
Hypocrites
Buying ethically grown coffee beans
Talking on phones, happy to be seen and met,
(Oh look at Mr. and Mrs. Special talking loudly
In public!)
These phones made by people who attempted suicide
But were saved by sweatshop nets

And these people with their self-satisfaction, worship monsters and follow
Their lead
Ignoring the deeds done and untried
For how can one punish a God-and-family-loving man?
He's a Christian, he'll rape the earth and others wherever he can,
He believes in Jesus and the Economy,
    No unions for him where workers are safe from corporate cruelty

Let oil bleed from below, let water be fracked and undrinkable
But, even so
Question the suit, unthinkable, no
    Who cares if justice cannot ensue
Children are soldiers, drones blacken the
   Ground
With their video game bombs
  That blow up without a sound
On t.v. screens in offices of the wealth, morally unhealthy few.

And all the while, consumers buy more than before, more than their ancestors did, always
Buried in debt
They purchase a fantasy and for awhile, maybe content
Before going on and buying and
Briefly burying themselves in the next.

How is this progress? more a hamster on
 A wheel
The rodent brain runs on
How little it feels.

Only with a tragedy do the blind awaken, the shaking off of slumber
And the sole human, whether in illness or
After a death, must look around and regard the greater wonder.

But for me, to live in this era, this time
     I know I would trade many of its
Insulated comforts
For the sensations that are currently dying

Like thought and imagination
Languages, logic and great conversation

To have friends instead of a book of faces
What good does a technology do
   If it all but replaces
A communion, a community at the market and hearth
To learn music and play and talk amongst others
   Instead of keyboarding in the dark

For this I would give all just to regain
   My cobblestone heart.