Graphology Chronotype 21: Desecrations of Place by Pokemon Go and its Soldiers — a poem

By John

Graphology Chronotype 21: Desecrations of Place by Pokemon Go and its Soldiers

The new colonialism

eliminates or integrates

the water’s edge. The Avon River

is replete and despite the chemical

run-off it can’t quite process,

birdlife is rife along its banks.

Perched in dying paperbarks

spoonbills eke out nesting plans,

and sacred ibises preen

themselves with optimism?

A problem with me using this term?

Really? Try the trampling-under

of birds and riparian vegetation

as the eye of the telephone

mediates the real world

into digestible auguries: and where

a rare white swan swings

its neck, a Pokemon perches,

scowling and grimacing.

Trodden under, this nature

of encounter, this exercise

routine to coax emergence

from the caves of gaming,

this tracking of each and every

cybernetic soul, this savvy

that marginalises non-participants

and swallows tales of capitalist

liberty with addicted gulps,

is a travesty of seeing. Too blunt?

Each step into privacy,

each sucking of another’s skin,

each moment of worship interrupted

and over-ridden, each threshold

crossed to gather location

to conquest, is the theft

of reality from non-participants,

all sucked into a vortex of deadlife.

The sacred ibises preen with optimism,

believing, along with spoonbills,

that they will nest and raise their young,

and see what they see with their own eyes.

Violation of geography, absorption of ‘outdoors’.

            John Kinsella