Shade

By Cliff Lake

 

Shade

 

The pulses,

The ones and zeroes,

They echo across a creation as intangible as breath,

Their reality is the product of arrangement,

Constructs that disappear, dissolve, disengage,

With the flick of a switch,

Or the whim of a nature uncontrollable.

What real phantom will you embrace?

What impalpable rock sets your feet?

What two-dimensional figure do you reach for?

Only the glare of the screen answers.

Words.

Words, words and words.

Colors and sounds from any distance unresolved,

The flat plane observed,

Lifeless,

Though it resembles animation.

Without a mouth of its own,

It consumes.

There is no reality here:

What is meant to be seen is seen,

What is meant to be heard is spoken.

Words.

Words, words and words.

They are but a shade of the speaker,

Insubstantial as the breath required to speak,

What is seen is meant to be seen –

Reality has more bruises.

Imperfections hidden by pretty phrase,

Implications misread,

Impersonations of substance:

Words.

Words, words and words…

Shades of materiality,

Representative and unreal,

Unreachable through the glass,

And what it displays,

But does not provide,

Shades of reality,

But no solidity,

Save the flat screen,

And the colors it flashes,

The noises it makes,

And the words…

The words of a mere shade…

 

Cliff Lake 6/23/2025

Copyright © Clifford Lake 2025

Location: Wichita, KS, USA

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