George Fox’s Monday Night extravaganza known as the Singer/Songwriter Soapbox provides local musicians and poets a venue to showcase their original works, and many of them are damned good, like Jason Chambers, Chuck Sullivan, among a host of others.

Last night Megan Posey recited – not read – recited “Screen-Faced Nation,” a performance you can check out in the video below. This twenty-something has some serious chops. Check her out.

Note: the incompetent videographer [embarrassed throat clearing] didn’t start shooting until the fifth line, but you can read the entire poem below the video.

Screen-Faced Nation

by Megan Posey

I’m reporting to you live from Addictionville, USA

Found in the collective mind of humankind

Where substances and behaviors disguised as property investors

Develop land on top of your bulldozed dopamine receptors

Uppers, downers, booze, gambling, sex, shopping and food

Are just some of the towns long established moguls of real estate

The city was historically inhabited by massive huddles of the tired and poor

And though many transients were lured in by the pleasure and escapism that dangled as bait

It was an exit on the interstate that you would probably just ignore

But that is clearly that is no longer the case

We’ve become a needle-armed, powder-nosed, screen-faced nation.

Pundits are puzzled over what led to the gentrification

But I’d like to shift your attention back to 2010

When we had just demolished OxyContin

And nicotine was undergoing renovation

The cigarette was outdated but we hadn’t yet created

A plan to market vaping to the younger generation.

So there was some land available in town

And a growing family looking to settle down

That’s when Social media began to break ground

And construct their now all-encompassing compound

But look beyond the flimsy facade of connection

And you’ll see an opium den filled to the brim with junkies

Fiending for their next self-esteem injection

This just in

Property crime in the area has now reached an all-time high

Your focus, motivation, and creativity are being jacked in broad daylight

But the truth is you hand them over without so much as a fight

See, you were so scared of getting left behind

That you closed your eyes and got in line with the blind

Until one day you woke up with your head pounding on a cold, hard floor

You tried to escape, but what did you find?

The foyer had turned to a labyrinth of corridors

And there was just no easy way out anymore

Even if you could manage to free your mind

These days you still gotta have at least one foot in the door

It’s sad to watch people waste their whole lives in this podunk town

They’re like stillborns in the underbelly who never started to crown

A real individual could have been born and that’s a hefty cost

But so long as you search outside of yourself for the way

It does not matter what turn you take, you will always end up lost

In the unnavigable wasteland of Addictionville, USA