THE CYBER DEAD
‘Knock-knock-knockin’ on Heaven’s door,’ a busker
began to sing near to the ice cream kiosk,
just after I had left the public toilet,
its adamantine urinals made
in Burnley. I walked beneath the lime trees,
along the embankment. The brown river
swirled in spate, high with rains from the remnants
of Atlantic storms breaking on shorn
and distant mountains. I thought of those dead friends –
their social media accounts intestate –
forever alive, and orbiting
eternally in cyber space, so close
yet still and always forlornly ‘Knock-knock-
knockin’ on Heaven’s door’.
John HUDDART
December 31, 2025Such a rich cornucopia of reference and description. Oh, to walk in England with you daily!
Alex Cox
January 1, 2026My friend Rudy Wurlitzer says he co-wrote the lyrics to that song with B. Dylan in a stormy flight from Durango to Mexico City. He received no credit. Thus is the writer’s lot!
Harvey Lillywhite
January 2, 2026Not sure about you, but the few times I’ve had to enter a recently dead person’s room, their clothes somehow frightened me, as if they had become heavy ghosts. The social media we leave behind is a bit similar.