Welcome to the Era of Openness: Poem

Welcome to the Age of Openness

Welcome to the age of openness

Where your worth is tied to your willingness to share

Where your experiences do not exist if they are not documented

    and posted for like share subscribe

Where every thought must be broadcast, every idea shared

Everything everything everything is content

And we are all just content creators and content consumers

And it used to be "it's not what you know, it's who you know,"

But now it's "how's the content, how many followers, how many subscribers,

    and what percentage of them are bots?

And people cry defund the police and oh no, what would we do,

    how would we catch the bad people,

    and we realize that cops don't catch the bad people anymore,

    people with cell phone catch the bad people by posting the videos,

    including videos of the cops.

The cops of the future will just be really, really online kids,

    and the choice will be cancel or convict.

Welcome to the era of openness,

Where the current president got nominated off the strength of his Twitter game,

Where simply documenting your existence is a viable career \,

Where you can be a youtuber, an influencer, a cosplayer, a gamer,

and a new defining aspect of being a have or have-not 

    relates to the speed of your internet connection.

Welcome to the era of openness,

Where maybe you don't have health insurance

    but if you can share well enough

    make yourself sympathetic enough

    maybe you can crowdsource enough money

    to see a doctor after a cop breaks your face

    for protesting against violence cops.

At least you got the whole incident on video .

That's great content.

Welcome to the era of openness,

Where the unwired are the ignored,

Where the private are the forgotten,

Where life is but an attention-desperate consumer

    that struts and frets through meme-cycles online

    and then is shared no more,

Where we are the idiots full of sound and fury,

    endlessly repeating nothing,

Where or social media profiles live on after we die.

Welcome to the new immortality.

* * *

Two Poems: Colloquial, and Omniphoria

Colloquial

The first good thing I wrote was a story

for a creative writing class.
We had an assignment each week
and by week three I was out of ideas
so I wrote a story about writer's block
that turned out pretty well--

That became one of the major themes of my art,
such as it is
art about art
because there's nothing else to talk about,
|novels about writers who are writing
novels about writers who are writing
novels about, hell, I dunno, me, I guess. 

If I was deeper person I would have deeper themes,
and sometimes I come up with something.
Love was a theme for a while,
And I got some mileage out of angst and depression
and drunkenness and the fear of going mad-- 

But eventually I'm left writing a poem
about not knowing what to write a poem about.
Metatextuality, they call it--
that act of creative, self-reflexive self-awareness. 

The colloquial term is being a dumbass.

* * *

Omniphoria

Dragons hoard gold and gems cups and crowns
Pseudodragons hoard any shiny crap they see
like spoons
beer bottle caps
or whatever

crows collect shiny things too
paper clips and such
carry them around
show them off
sometimes give them as gifts
to children who set out  food for them

It is omniphoria
a neologism
Greek omni ‘all’ + pherein ‘carry’
-> ‘all-carrying’

and it applies to the artists too
the painters singers poets makers
who collect the shiny little things
carry them around
show them off
and then make gifts of them.

* * *

"Omniphoria" originally appeared in Suggestion Box: Fifty Poems.

Three Poems: Octopus, School, and Quaint

Three poems: "Octopus," from the Suggestion Box: Fifty Poems collection, "School," and a new poem, "Quaint."

Octopus

The common octopus is a marvel

eight tentacles which can be categorized
as two legs and six arms
with a battery of super-powers:
the toothed tongue for sawing through shells,
the ability to change color and texture
to blend in with surfaces,
the ink spray to obfuscate its escape
while jetting away at forty kilometers an hour,
and smart enough to dance
with its reflection in a mirror.

It is an amazing creature
the smartest invertebrate
and one of this planet’s wonders
and yet it lives
only twelve to eighteen months
before dying.

And here I sit
eating stale chips
and reading yesterday’s paper.
I’ll probably get eighty years.

Doesn’t seem fair, somehow.

* * *

School

One thing that made it possible
for me to get up every morning
and drag myself through the mixture
of tedium and drudgery,
the mild threat of violence or humiliation
that bullies and social hierarchy presented

was the possibility of the random encounter
the crossing of paths with my many crushes
the chance of a kind word spoken
or a moment of eye contact

but let's face it

as necessary as the whole thing is,
for the most part
school was just
a goddamn drag

and my crushes faded into the past
not knowing they were my crushes
and if I was anyone else's crush
I faded away
not knowing it either.

* * *

Quaint

Anybody can be amazing once
Anybody can hit a single home run
Or throw one knockout punch
Anybody can bust their ass
and lead the pack for one single day. 

But the challenge comes the next morning
when you have to get up
and the pack is ready to go again.
The challenge comes after that single great success
and you’re told
“Great shot, kid. Do it again.”

 Anybody can be intense for a brief stretch.
It’s much harder to be consistent.
It’s much harder to get up every single day and tell yourself,
time to do it again. 

No one ever made it off of
one great shot or one great day.
You only ever make it
if you’re willing to do your best
again and again
and again
and again.

* * *

Two Poems: Waves, and Putrefaction

Waves

 

Trouble comes at you in waves

Crashing against you relentlessly

 

Demands and criticisms

Dangers and needs and insufficiencies

Conflict and danger and worry

 

These waves are eternal

They never stop coming

 

And like stones on the seashore

these waves can shape you

wear you down

wash you away

 

Some days are storms

the waves hit you like blows--

Other days are placid

and you feel nothing but a caress.

 

What can you do?

You can't stop trouble from coming

any more than the rock can stop the sea.

But just like the rock

you can stand strong

with eternal patience

and understanding.

 

* * *

Putrefaction

 

There was a time when I saw a real problem with rock and roll--

Rock and roll, and beer, and TV,

and everything I really liked basically--

 

Because I saw them and all the other

amusements and entertainments that make life tolerable

as blocking real progress--

 

Anything that lets the proletariat blow off steam

prevents the steam from building up and rupturing a broken system.

 

Because who needs to concern themselves

with throwing off the yoke of the oppressors

if you can get drunk and dance to good music

and if you don't meet a girl or a boy or whoever you like

there will always be some TV to keep you company--

 

Marx said religion was the opiate of the masses--

true for his time perhaps, although too narrow.

A regime that represses everything will always fall sooner or later

But an oppressive system that allows religion

and beer and porn and rock and roll and everything else

is very difficult to overthrow because

there is so much to distract the oppressed from the oppression--

 

and it's so hard to focus on the putrefaction of the system

and overwhelming injustice and inequity and corruption

when your sports team is in the playoffs

and there's a new Thor movie coming soon

and weed is legal and beer is in the grocery stores--

 

Who could rebel under such a system?

Consumer culture keeps us as happy little victims.

 

Billionaires laugh

while we drink and dance and blow off our steam.

 

* * *

New Poem: Delicate

Delicate

 

It can be really difficult living with other people

I've never met anyone who can be happy all the time

and familiarity breeds contempt

while absence makes the heart grow fonder

and all the other very true clichés--

 

and all I want is to be alone most of the time

but just like when I was a little kid

and I hated drying the dishes so much

but I often did it without being asked

just so my mom wouldn't have to do everything alone--

 

Now I spend my time with the others

maybe not as much as they want

but more than I want--

 

that sense of obligation and duty pushing me--

 

but then sometimes when I do too much

and it starts to grate on my nerves

I get shitty and nasty and on edge

 

"you're always on edge" they tell me

and it's true

 

it's all a delicate balance:

be there so much that they never miss me

but be away enough that I can stand it

 

and most of all

I really think I overestimate

how much I'm needed anyway

 

sometimes.

* * *

New Poem: Opulence

Opulence

 

One factor that motivated the French

to surrender Paris to the Nazi war machine

rather than fight for every inch of ground

was the desire to preserve the architecture

the art

the monuments

the opulence--

 

They didn't want to see their history

churches, museums, palaces, etcetera

demolished by bombs, artillery, and tanks--

 

Better to surrender their monuments

of victory and liberty to the fascists

and as a result they saw Nazi soldiers

smirking as they marched under the Arc de Triumphe.

 

Sartre was right in his comment

that surrendering these objects to fascists

robbed them of their worth

and made them meaningless.

 

Try to remember when you're living under fascists

not to cry too much at the destruction of property

belonging to the oppressor class.      

A broken window means nothing

compared to

enforced poverty

and a boot on your throat.

 

 

* * *