Are You For Real?

Everything that is real to human beings…
Is not so real anymore

We invented money and gods and robots and twitter-feeds,
We sit behind a blue glow.

Wondering where we are.
Or are we, at all?

Were we?

We were. There. East Africa — maps are real —
Because we dragged lines in dust,
Then made them from trees,
Then electrons,

We collected mind pixels,
(a made-up word, like thoughts)

We abstracted those bits,
Into symbols, into shapes, into policy,

Then we asked,
Where did the sky go?

Once…
Gods and goddesses, centaurs and dragons
Swirled above, spiraled into heads and hearts.
Around our campfires

Bears grumbled, lions haunted, elephants huffed,
Until we borrowed some sparks, blew them into the dark.

Then. We emerged with those sparks to tell each other stories,
Like the one you are reading now.

Lions, even, a real animal! stalked…
Blurred away by the light of our metropolitan
Imaginal, yet somehow, blinding

Places
A nation, a race, a currency
Not a real thing, mind you, a construct,
We can step outdoors, without ear buds
Breathe, and drink atoms from skies and forests

And are confused.
A tree branch wisped by wind reaches out in kinship
Or a bird explains shared DNA has a song

But we can’t hear that, we have thoughts.
Real thoughts.