Turn back once more and Wave

Turn back once more and Wave

 

we fondle our values

then turn away

in embarrassment

turning red with Mercurochrome deference

 

patch up wounds

from childhood

like they are about to burst

with infection

 

we accept

propaganda's virtue

as our own

selling the core of ourselves

 

for pennies

on the dollar

no longer holler

or rage in protest

 

we become them

and them

and more them

the mirror draws a blank

 

our reflection

dims

in the scuffed glass

we've grown old and too weary

 

to stand 

for what we once stood

say goodbye to ourselves

plant ourselves on the couch

 

press the remote

and watch our lives

dissolve

with the rest of the herd.

 

 

erin-cilberto

12/14/25

Reviews

[Jennesis]

I’ve been out of practice writing for a while and I forget how beautiful all your words are. It’s so easy to disconnect these days.

[jacob erin-cilberto]

Thank you for the kind words, Jennesis.
j.

[Lorry]

I too wonder what the hell the reflection is telling me I look like now and wonder when that subtle change became as subtle as a lump hammer, with aspirations of being a persuader (AKA, a sledgehammer)
That scuffed glass is the culprit, otherwise known as any reflective surface, otherwise known as July bathroom mirror! 😀
Ps, apologies for reading my own slow and lingering demise from youth into your words. 😀

[jacob erin-cilberto]

I am glad you are able to relate...no apologies, Please.
j.

[Lorry]

Tell that to my mirror Jacob. 😆

[Soren]

Once a supple new shoot drown by rains and burnt by sun the wind of time has bent us. The news and commercial propaganda has bound and pruned our limbs shaping us to the owner's desired form and with age we have grown brittle and rigid. Accepting what we have become we sit awaiting the final storm that will uproot us and mulch us back into the earth from which we came the fruit we bear is now bird pecked bug infested and bitter. A poor crop indeed. A most sad write Jacob

[jacob erin-cilberto]

and a most insightful review....thank you, Soren.
j.

[Soren]

You are always most welcome my friend

[Laz K.]

values, personal wounds, public life, identity...so many different things are addressed here, and somehow, they are all interconnected. life, it seems, doesn't offer a neatly packaged answer to our questions. or maybe it does, but what it' saying is that we will never transform what's out there. we can only hope to make peace with what is by transforming what's inside of us.

[jacob erin-cilberto]

only what we can control...that is where we make peace. Thank you for your insightful words, Laz.read moreonly what we can control...that is where we make peace. Thank you for your insightful words, Laz.
j.

[Curly Grace]

press the remote

and watch our lives

dissolve

with the rest of the herd.

this was powerful, Jacob

[jacob erin-cilberto]

Thank you, Sarah.
j.

[Tara]

I love this. It is a sad commentary on complacency as we age. I miss the days of revolution. This stirred me up! I’m getting ready to take a stand! Find my voice! (Right after my afternoon nap)

[jacob erin-cilberto]

I miss those days as well. Voices carried back then. THank you for your words, Tara. I love barns...so I really like the avatar.
j.

[emmajoygreen]

Perhaps Humankind has lost what creatures retain: natural instinct. We people bow to fashion, wear externally and adopt internally what is 'IN, DICTAT, FASHION and now, AI. So much individuality is lost because people have Big Brother ordering and re-ordinary what's right. Questioning things is no longer considered a right but 'a heated debate'

Your words cover to much ground, perhaps they should and could be a gentle debate on what you might well have incubated then .. set free, sir.

[jacob erin-cilberto]

Thank you so much for this reply, em.
Ah, you get me too, too well.
j.

[red93]

Fabulous Jacob, and I think particularly of that Springsteen Song, '57 Channels and Nothing On'. Exceptional ✨️✨️✨️✨️✨️

[jacob erin-cilberto]

Thank you, red.

[Robert Trakofler]

how many gems can I come across in one day?
I just read a piece from kindle ken and another from John the Baptist a review from dear Emma and now this poem! I am in readers bliss right now!
It has come to my attention that so many of your voices have helped me to form mine over the many years I have known you all and this poem is no exception!
but enough about me/us and more about this piece...
this poem is so cleverly brilliant LOL
Not because it’s flashy, or clever for clever’s sake—but because it knows where it’s standing.

A lot of poems gesture at disillusionment.
This one inhabits it without theatrics, without ego, without letting the speaker off the hook. That’s rare.

What makes it good—quietly, stubbornly good—is that it doesn’t say “look what was done to us.”
It says “look what we agreed to while we were tired.”

That takes honesty.
And courage of a different, less performative kind.

the grace of not personalizing a poem to the extent that it isnt about you but us is such a wonderful trait to have in a scrawl you guys have taught me that trick very early on in my own evolution of write and this poem is such a great example of that technique!
I have found myself a lot recently sitting in resignation of the body politic at large sitting in my dilapidated armchair staring at the screen of my very dusty television feeling such a sense of resignation!

[jacob erin-cilberto]

I am feeling that resignation as well, brother Bunny.
Thank you for your very kind words on this poem.
It is inspired by a book I just reviewed for Highland Park Poetry. The is Before I Lie by Dralandra Larkins. She is an amazing poet.
j.

[Robert Trakofler]

I would like to see this review and book if you send me a link. I am always listening to hear a new lesson from a fellow scribbler

[John the Baptist]

A lot of ground is covered in this offering, which is a somber look at what happens to the masses in the electronic age. Many, says the speaker, have lost whatever idealism they might have had in the past and allowed the media to dictate the "truth" to them. Where once they may have protested, they now let themselves be manipulated electronically. In the end, tired and weary, they sit back and listen to the online piper's tune. A scary scenario, especially in the age of Trump.

[jacob erin-cilberto]

Yes, especially. THank you for your words here, John.
j.