Thanatos and Technophilia

Carlos Manuel Rivera

Algae that
they soften,
restlessness
of loneliness and
agglomerations

of rivers
and carnations
in discomfort
of his entourage.

Delves
the piercing channel
from the intersection.

Would pass
the rites,
the vintage screen
and the bow of the scream
to pause
this transit
from a distance.

They would imaginate
hallucinations
that unite
ancestral backgrounds
of the lordships
when passers-by
they walked long
as emissaries.

Then
in the face of the
torch
they would sweat
the symphonies,
if the skull
she exists as a muse.

Entity
inside
enemies
‘war machines,’
flooding with opprobrium

absent as
of movement
who rides
the grotto
submerged
until
the increase.

Fall
in noise
and masks,
the adversaries.

They’d smile
of Nereids
their vessels,

basins
& Lights
that sound
the sunset,
marble
what means
your death,

and the apparatus laughs
like nothing
of his
footprint.

Copyright © 2024 by Carlos Manuel Rivera. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on December 17, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.

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about this poem

“This is an allegorical poem with mythical references to everyday social life. The poem alludes to the supra importance of technology in our daily lives. Virtuality has replaced the old social way of living. Collective human communication, good habits in the practice of daily life, has been lost. The high consumption of technology in the present has led humanity and the planet to a state of catastrophe, hecatomb, and death.”
—Carlos Manuel Rivera

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