Are You Living In Your Head?

A poem? I know. Sorry. I got to thinking about people sitting in front of computer screens and not even interacting with the people behind those screens and this is what came out. Coincidentally, these songs about solitude and loneliness are living in my head:

New Pornographers--"Adventures In Solitude" (mp3)

Bastard Sons of Johnny Cash--"Beautiful Cage" (mp3)

YOU ARE LIVING IN YOUR HEAD

Are you living in your head?
Are you saying what you wished
You’d said, but only in your head?

Do you look in windows at
Other lives, yellow lamps and
A flickering screen behind a cat?

The car at night streams black,
Traveling through blackness and you
The blank, the central fact.

Wind, scream, white, strum, salt, shine:
Everything’s outside the window;
Nothing stays within the lines

Or lights. No, the road curves.
The sun comes up blindingly
And startles slumbering nerves

Shrilly as a crow’s noisy beak,
Cawing the fearful knowledge
That you will have to speak.

The New Pornographers feature the incredible Neko Case sometimes, but are quite good in their own right. "Adventures in Solitude" comes from their recent release, Challengers. "Beautiful Cage" is from Distance Between, the second release from The Bastard Sons of Johnny Cash. Both CDs are available from Itunes.