Torrent

tornados of photographs

caught lift, swirled, came crashing

through towns, cities, alleys

into the faces represented

selfies agape, fake

smiles replaced with real horror

disbelief, digital deluge

billions upon billions of unseen

pixel pictures

now face to face

with addicts who took them

in all those mirrors

filling every empty moment

peace replaced with the noise

of lonely hordes

now ghostly

like 19th-century expressions

mystified by the essence capture

as if souls were stolen, rather

than location, micro-expression, age verification

privacy syphoned into the cloud

now become storm

for which there is no shelter

save the off switch