“A poem is never finished, only abandoned.” — Paul Valery
In these days of sane-washing and chaos-preneurs,
of mysterious, vague and grandiose gestures,
mosaic-like structures,
epic ruptures—
inquiring minds want to know:
How did the Internet get so bad?
High-minded interrogators coexist with petty-feud fulminators.
Sad souls. Grievance producers. Trauma sufferers. Jokesters and Emotesters.
Cosmic comic self-consciousness mavens declaring their suffering in public.
In these times when The Miller’s Tale and Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address
become Japanese anime,
and FDR’s New Deal is turned into a graphic novel,
read while kicking tin cans down rainbow streets,
and searching out the fruit man’s beats.
The internet tosses out figures second after second,
and the only reason we care
is if they do something dangerous.
Otherwise, it all vanishes into ether.
You’re walking, you’re talking,
about ghosts of Hanukkah past.
I’m walking, I’m talking,
Having a conversation that surely won’t last.