Dystopia, it’s like your phone screen in the night
 [but your data is trapped in a cabbage, a last remaining testimony. nature reclaimed your digital form, the embrace of something so foreign yet warm.]

 

I sold my feelings on the internet.

I don’t know what I thought I’d expect.

I guess I thought a feeling was always my own.

A moment was easy to share on my phone.

But I’ve signed the contract, I’m locked in and scared.

I have the codes, the products to share.

A baby, a wedding, my mental health.

All as a method for corporate stealth.

Even this poem I’ve written whilst numb.

Is a promotional shout-out for CODE 20 HUNS.

The only problem is that the more that I do.

The more that I doctor, edit and skew.

The less they believe me, my pelican legs.

My pout is consuming but they consume nonetheless.

My influence dwindles as more sell their souls.

Power in numbers is a lie you were told.

I have no feelings left to sell so the shipping just stopped.

One day I woke up and I had no PO BOX.

The vessel I am is a vessel they used.

I live off skinnytummy tea, it does little to soothe.

It is a fine line to tread, conflicting and rootless.

To be aspirational but relatable, struggling but faultless.

I used to be fleshy, silly and loud.

But now I am pixels, part of the cloud.

I became so personalised I lost my form.

So authentic everything I said meant nothing at all.

Thought vulnerability was a marketable trait.

But when nothing hurt nothing felt great.

In my spare time I rubbed charcoal toothpaste under my nails.

Recited algorithms so my page wouldn’t fail.

I shed my nuance for yet more skin.

I shed it all and let them flood in.

Now I am simply a capitalist hand.

But no one will realise because ‘I am my brand!’