Challenging Poetry

are we so different?

in the middle ages,
it was the plague that made people
sequester themselves inside, painting
warnings on the front door,
walking around with posies before their faces
so that ill humors could not enter through
the nose, meeting the carts in the morning
to bring out their dead who were packed
into unmarked graves, hundreds at a time,
every morning until all had been ill,
until most had died.

seven hundred years
and a billion smart phones
later, what is different?
we are still sequestered—family by family—
waiting for death to knock,
going swiftly mad with boredom and isolation
while the world grinds down outside,
and the town criers shout out on
the internet of the end of the world.

line count: 20
April 11: technology or artificial intelligence