Virtual World

 JThis world where up is down and false is true...

What universe is this, that beckons humans of late?

Where we exist, but as avatars

And our heart beats sound like streams of code?

This world where up is down and false is true

Love is lust and human bonds are but words that are just typed cues

This wonder stitched with coded light, does it enhance or blind our sight?

It started with smiles my child, they called it a silicon dream

Promising us a life made easy and exciting

"Just to ease your load," they sweetly said

And proceeded with slipping wires through our hearts and our heads.

Then a lens firmly inserted itself between the world and our eyes

And started painting illusions on our open blue skies

They swapped our world with one that was blind to truth

With their lens and filtered scenes

They proceeded to steal our souls and scrub it clean

Clean of values, truth and humanity

Our thoughts were mapped, our steps were designed,

These rich technocrats began to rewrite the human mind.

Our very identities became a code for them to own,

And our freedoms crushed under the data king’s throne

What once was freely ours- our dreams, our beings and our very identities

Were now being sold to the highest bidding entities

They say it’s just a game, just a layer of light,

a digital lens to make this world bright.

But behind that gleam, some of us saw a scheme,

where nothing was quite what it seems

Reality was replaced when they said we could “choose” our face, our thoughts and our style

Then they started feeding us a lie wearing a branded smile.

They said, “Here, escape the dull and true,

Come with us on this virtual journey and we will take you to magic cities with skies so blue.”

But what they did not tell us is that our choices will be tracked, our daily rhythms hacked,

Our own dreams will be repackaged and sold right to us right back.

What was once free, now costed us a heavy fee

And then we could no longer discern the truth from false,

Since everyone’s identities were but rented

And our every scroll, every glance, every word was augmented.

We didn’t even own our own reflection; they edited that too.

Freedom then became a brand that was sold in updates.

And if we paused to question, the algorithm to snuff us out always awaits.

It reshaped our fears, our hopes, our belly’s fire,

till even resistance started wearing corporate attire.

No, my child, this isn’t fiction

It was a rather a slow invasion

Of our self, of our thoughts, of our very nations

Some of us beseeched, let us take off this lens, let us step past this frame.

Let us find what’s real in this tiring game

Before our minds become terrain that is owned, surveyed, and softly chained.

On deaf ears these pleas fell my child

“Look” the digital enslavers exclaimed, we are your saviours

 To you we are so similar

Similar? That is what the axe said, to the trees in the woods

“Look, we are so similar”, the axe said to the trees in the woods as they gathered to elect a king

“Your trunks and my handle, they are both made from the same wood”

“Chose me your king, make me your king, I am just like you” the axe cried

The foolish trees acted as it advised, the axe now a proud king crowned

Alas, now those trees that since ages immemorial whispered their ancient secrets to the breeze,

Now they lay as silenced stumps, mourning their fate with leafless pleas

They that had stood as green guardians and fed this planet, with their roots deep into the land,

Now felled and burned by the axe’s own greedy hand

Folly, folly, folly my child

Folly was the trust they placed in that axe

Calamity, my child, disaster is what our trust in this virtual world and its creators yet turn out to be