Slice of Life/ SmallPoems Day 6 (human lampposts)

(I am participating in the March Slice of Life challenge via the Two Writing Teachers site.Ā  Slice of Life is the idea of noticing the small moments. I have been a participant for many years and each year, I wonder if I will have the energy to write every day. This year, I am going to try to coincide it with my daily poetry writing, and intend to compose small poems on small moments. We’ll see how it goes …)

Day Six

like driving
through freeze-frame;
I’m the only thing
in motion on this
short city street ā€” I tally
five men, two women
head-bent over phones,
rooted human lampposts
with a dull shine glow

Peace (looking alert),
Kevin

13 Comments
  1. Should this poem depress me? I get sad when I look around and heads are bent over glows instead of interacting or looking around. Rooted human lampposts is a powerful series of words.

    • I think we should be concerned — a street of people interacting not with each other but with their devices is not good — usually, of course, you see some people on phones but this was the entire small street … it was weird.
      Kevin

    • Not sure how I do it …. I regularly write a morning poem each day anyway … for Slice of Life, I am focusing on small moments to capture in the flow of words …. in some ways, since I don’t follow any strict poetic form, it’s like writing a narrative post, but squiggling free at line breaks, and internal rhymes, and thinking of imagery all the time. I also keep them short, narrow, to the point, as much as possible.

      This is where I regularly post daily poems: https://write.as/dogtrax/

      Kevin

  2. Love the image of “driving through freeze frame.” Like Melanie, though, the image of people staring at devices is, well, a tad depressing. Beautiful poem, though.

    On a different note, I did read your very first post about reading the Lorax to your sons. It’s priceless, man. Glad we now have that in common. Thanks for sharing it with me šŸ™‚

  3. “Rooted human lampposts with a dull shine glow”–what an accurate, and depressing, description of the isolation abetted by personal devices, the illusion of a connected root system feeding the addiction…Makes me treasure face-to-face conversations even more.

  4. Great metaphor- “rooted human lampposts”
    Your poem shares what is happening or has happened to us. I just read another post today about the use of devices.

  5. Ooooooh! This one is amazing! I love the image of people “head-bent over phones.” I can so clearly “see” what you saw!

    Kim

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