Government Surveillance
Its life composes of captured frames
Gleaned from public video sources
Sequences caught on city streets,
Recorded for no one’s pleasure.
Captured image as daylight creeps
And shadows grow ever larger.
It’s just a glimpse from a camera eye
Constantly watching and recording.
Unseeing lense, watching all
Invading moments left to choice
Random actions stored to tape
Indexed with a time and date.
Bytes of data stored away
Painting a big picture.
Digital moments of that time
All stolen from my life.
-Clarence Holm
It used to be that we were just reduced to numbers – Social Security #, Account #, Case #. Now even further reduced, our humanity slowly (or not so slow) being reduced. Fantastic poem.