Saturday, May 14, 2011

Face: Book: Yell

About 1998-2000, I webbed pages with Myself.
They float out there still. Dormant.
Thickly crusted. Embarrassing only insofar as:
Who the hell cares? And: I’ve moved on.
But… I let them persist.

In plain language, my job: manage communications.
Encompass web. Once, one could proceed in anonymous glory.
Now? Add social media. Next: engage. As yourself.
Am so doing. Might start to convince
my Friends and associates they made the wrong choice.
Hold on tight.

Permit that I propel ponderous musings
on the significance of the medium.
Does anyone keep journals any more?
Write longhand? You there – got any attention span left?
Is it pompous I should persist in this way?
I shan’t apologize.
The actual is in the playground, on recess.

Reluctant, but now pliant
for my station – profession-alley – so demands:
that I turn my Face to the Book.
One cannot do one’s job without it.
Yet I have spent enough day in my Face,
would rather turn my Profile to Home,
soft sofas, familiars,
distant sound of water pouring over rocks.

And who has much to say?
Oh, my Friends. Our sharings, our likes are a bit mundane.
Piqued by snark and spunk.
Carried by the frisson of memes.
Not bad… not Michelangelo either.
Why should I worry? It’s just…
Once, the days peeled away without threatening to persist.

My parents’ generation had no need for this Book.
Nor did they have to Face it.
But transplant them to another era, they would be different people.
Which would have more merit or valor?
The times now tell us the Book is essential.
Yes,
if we consent to be all Face.

To say I’m ambivalent here.
I’m like the Grand Canyon.
I don’t want to be here at all.
I only want to be here if I succeed extravagantly.
I don’t want to just be myself.
I don’t exactly want to disappear.
I want to annoy you so much you come to need it.
I don’t want to change, not on these terms.
I want to change you.

Everybody is so absorbed.
I’m completely uninterested.
Not in you.
Just in you here, in the Book.
I’m not striking a pose.
It’s totally visceral.
This isn’t where I want to be.
Just call me: just call me.