On Joining A Poetry Website Poem by Anton K

There are morning birds singing their
fragmentary tunes in honey-sweet
tones outside my window. The dim
blue light stumbles in, like an old blind man,
through the smudged and cobwebbed glass as
I lay with a laptop on my torso, a brood
of bread crumbs heaving on my woolen chest.
The clinical gleam of the oblong screen is
reflected in my glasses and my mouth is
unexcited and my fingers laze upon the keys.
A tap upon a sensory pad and I trip into
the pixel-clad claws of a website, a website
devoted to poets and poems - a product
of the unpoetical present. What place has
a poet in an all-too-modern age? Where
can the scent of laurel leaves be in the
blinking eyes of a Wi-Fi modem? Where is
the sound of the shepherd's flute in
the duck-quack ringtone track of an iPhone?
The castles have crumbled, their heads are
bowed: they've decked their cracked and weathered
stones in moss and sickly slime.
The harp has been split, the shields are shattered
and the bones of romance are reduced to dust,
choking the wind of a helicopter sky. Will
rosy-cheeked infants, tucked up in bed, be
read their fairy tales from the touchscreen
of a tablet? Has Shakespeare been buried
in a quote-spewing app? Is the merit and
worth of immortal verses dependent on
the harlotry of a thumbs-up icon?
Can a sensitive soul exist intact
in the age of the tweet and the hashtag?
Or is the soul of our time a ghost,
a shadow staining the face of a mirror?
Gone forever is the simpler past, past are
the days of the pen of the poet.
Past is the epoch of the sage on
the mountain, and the bearded hermit
languishing for God in the desert.
The flaxen-haired maiden
adrift in a grove, the songs
of the druids at rest in her
ears. Enchanted rivers in
Grecian woods, alive with the sighs
of the nymphs and satyrs.
The somersaults over the bulls
of Knossos, the fragrant offerings
for the idols of stone. The sprites
and fairies have taken wing, the
temples have sunk in the arms of the earth.
And now, for my words to be read
or heard, I must submit them in
accordance with the 'posting rules',
select a * Required topic or two, add
a form and (optional) story and enter a
giddy-looking verification code.