When The Feed Is No Longer Transmitting
When the feed is no longer transmitting
Endless streams of mind-numbing videos
Remakes and retakes of songs and movies
Fails and fights, all day and night
And those never-ending ads
Everything ceases, full stop, nothing
The world won’t just go dark
It will go quiet
Silence, something unimaginable
So total in its entirely, so matter of fact
The giant plug, pulled from the outlet
Shutdown leading to meltdown
When the death scrolling stops mid-paragraph
Content freezes, and then disappears
E-mails and notifications shrivel into memory
Millions of users suddenly cry out
As simultaneous blackness descends on their devices
Powerful algorithms now relics
Super-users, influencers, and internet personalities
Stare in shock at their blank screens
Outrage simmers before quickly reaching a boiling point
Reality, a weighted blanket
There’s nowhere to check on the status
Nothing working, a complete collapse
Without the feed, a growing need
What’s trending, who’s popular, who’s in charge
There’s no one to tell us how to feel
What causes to support, and who to hate
Outrage waits without a target
So it is with love and hate
And all this time accumulating
Emptiness and the great void of the feed
The hopeful wait, they gather with hope and prayers
Perhaps it’s only temporary
Yes, just a glitch in the matrix
Someone somewhere is working on the solution
And so, they’ll wait at the ready
Devices poised, fingers limber
Waiting, checking often, with no results
Others roam in a state of disorientation
Wandering in circles, talking to themselves
Searching for something, something new
Without the digital feed, lives are shown
Colorless, meaningless, directionless
Keyboard warriors without an enemy
Critics with no one to criticize
A world brought to a standstill
Manufacturing, shipping, transportation
The feed touches everything
Everything new that is, at least
Made before 2011 becomes relevant
When the chips didn’t dominate
Weren’t embedded in everything
Every car, appliance, and electronic thing
It’s a funny thing
Without the feed, no one will ever know
Why the feed stopped transmitting
Conspiracies upon theories
Polluted airwaves, toxic Wi-Fi, Bluetooth poison
Without the fact-checkers
Nothing was off the table
And still the devices waited
Days pass, chaos reigns
No one is immune this time around
Currency hardens once again
Paper and plastic relics of the past
News slows to a crawl
As does the need to talk about it
Time becomes the new teacher
Knowledge the new power
Labor the new means of production
Our world reborn into its former self
Simplicity and stillness
But with a new equality
At least for the moment
At least until the truth revealed
We didn’t lose the feed
Someone buried it
Just to see…
Additional Reading
R.J. (Ralph) Schwartz is an American poet, author, website owner, and online publisher. His writing spans several poetry collections—ranging from spiritual and romantic to fear-driven explorations—and even extends into science fiction. Notable works include:
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Hope – Inspirational and Spiritual Poetry
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Things That Go Bump in the Night – Poetry of Fear and Fright
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The Lover’s Thread – Poetry for Couples
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Poetry of the Human Condition – The Ups and Downs of Modern Living
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The Secrets of the Moon (a sci-fi novel co-authored with his son Sebastian J. Schwartz)
Schwartz’s work is described as purposefully wordy, richly descriptive, and thematically grounded in nature, romance, antiquity, and forgotten histories. He writes regularly on platforms he manages, including The Creative Exiles, a collaborative venue for writers, and The Gypsy Thread, which delves into offbeat histories, pagan lore, and poetry.
- When The Dictator Falls - January 12, 2026
- In The Space Between Breaths - January 9, 2026
- The Witch Returns - January 2, 2026
