Hi, everyone, welcome to Poetry Night. I’ve got an interesting couple of poems to share with you, about both the digital world and the analog world. Hope you enjoy them.
I’ve been writing poetry with more regularity in recent months. For the year 2025 I have written six of them. At least two of them were not for publication in the short term or maybe even in the long term. It’s been therapeutic to express myself like that and not worry about other people’s opinions.
If You’re Interested in my Poetry Here…
My first collection of poetry1 is out now.
Since Substack doesn’t quite have the setup for this, I’ve set up something here at Liegois Media. I set up my own Internet storefront page where you can order my chapbook for $6 per copy. This is the link, as is the one below.
As I might have mentioned, I’ve become a bit wary of people acting like friends online but eventually seeing me as an opportunity to make some money. That likely prompted the following poem.
Screening
19 February 2025/Fort Madison, Iowa
Stuck at home
Huddled by yourself
Looking for human relations
You turn to the screen.
The screen is fast
The screen can take you anywhere
The screen sets up the relationship
But you wonder if a relationship can be trusted
As much as a flickering screen
Can a voice and picture on the screen be trusted
If a bot can recreate it
And can a vibe be checked
Through that colorful screen
Even if it covers your living room wall?
The second poem is something of a recollection of how wonderful some analog interaction between people can be. It’s something I increasingly treasure.
Greetings
19 February 2025, Fort Madison, Iowa
When you go out of your house
To shake a new person’s hand
To hear a trusted voice say, “I’d like you to meet…”
And words dance through the air
As you find out more about them
Their lives
Their hobbies and interests
How you watched the same movies
Knew about the same types of sports
And you remember how you used to meet and greet
In the days before The Screen and The WiFi.
You take in the panorama of your scene
As the food and drink and laughs flow
And what strikes you is how biological the meeting is
Rather than digital.
That’s it for tonight. I thought I was running out of topics for poetry, but new themes keep popping up in my work. We’ll see what March brings.
While I do appreciate you following this blog, I really would like you to subscribe to my Substack page. By subscribing to that page, you’ll not only be receiving my Substack newsletter, The Writing Life With Jason Liegois (the companion blog to this one), but you’ll also be signing up for my email list. Just click the button below.
- By the way, feel free to skip over this if you saw it before and move on to the actual poetry. ↩︎