Frank Johnson

Now everybody’s staring at a screen
it seems a simple fact of modern life
that real life’s left for living in between.

Sometimes despite the wonders of IT
it looks less of a blessing than a blight
when everybody’s staring at a screen

for world-wide web can all too easily mean
there’s world-wide room for wrong as well as right,
real life being left for living in between.

And please don’t think IT will set you free:
you work for Mark, Jeff, Elon and their like,
now everybody’s staring at a screen.

So pull the plug, relax, stroll by a stream,
stop staring, be a latter-day Luddite.
Don’t leave your life for living in between.

And before you accuse me of hypocrisy,
it’s just that I’m an online type of writer
who cannot but be staring at a screen
with real life left for living in between.

Frank Johnson lives in Coventry, England. In addition to poetry, his interests include painting and learning Irish. More of his poetry can be found at ashortspell.com/francopomes-2

Career: postman; postal and telegraph officer; registrar of births, deaths and marriages; polytechnic/university administrator; interpreter and translator (from Czech and Portuguese); retired. Poetry publications: 2013: Boscombe Revolution; 2023: AUB International Poetry Competition, highly commended; Erbacce Press, ten poems, highly commended; 2024: Frogmore Papers, Swerve; 2025: Locofo Anti-Trump Anthology: Poems for Freedom; Wildfire Words; Waltham Forest Poetry Competition: 1st Prize for funny poem.

This poem appeared in What We Hold On To: Poems of Coping, Connection, and Carrying On — Winter 2026, published by The Chaos Section Poetry Project. We’ll be featuring each poem from the collection individually in the weeks ahead. You can read the full collection or download a free PDF of the chapbook here.