Internet.

I seek for my answers but instead find madness,

amid the clamour of confused voices.

Nearly seven billion tongues pen

a million linguistic forms;

minds deliberate over dialects

and didaction, seeking meaning or God;

or just pleasing the moment

of global intercourse.

Finding a voice amid the babble -

the constant murmuring deafens.

Prophets and messiahs – true

or false? Who knows – there are so many?

Intolerance is neither sin nor

surprising when none can hear

another; individual heartbeats seem

merely virtual or alien, or the newest

con from sad, dusty fingers:

an S.O.S. to reach a calmer somewhere.

In this information overload,

I cannot withstand the flood

of disconnection, which liquidises

all permanent structures of belief.

I ache for silence from such mayhem;

to know the still echo of serenity,

which spoke all along,

under the thunder that is not thunder,

but the world's pain, in throng.

Christopher James Rhodes.