Friending

Social media has redefined 

self-worth in measures not

measured by internal notches, 

like a metronome for honest

heartbeats, but by accounting 

records of follows, friends 

and likes. Like a peeping 

Tech-Tom, follows allow 

watchng someone without 

being friends. Fairytale 

profiles can be shared in 

the virtual world of voyeurs, 

with no flirty foreshadow or 

live commentary. So friends 

can like and others can follow, 

faster than speed-dating, 

without ever sharing air – 

a form of anonymous intimacy, 

an efficient method of world 

involvement without time-

consuming, actual interaction. 

Audience selector and block 

features promote world peace 

by eliminating face-to-face 

confrontation or messy real-time 

improvisation. Controversial 

explanation is assassinated by 

the stealth computer. The profile 

picture’s executive producer

has final say over timeline, 

events, and groups so interior 

life stays an Internet away. 

Discomforts and disparities 

are censored with a click 

of the spam key. Reality becomes 

a manageable board game.  

           © Patsy Asuncion, 2016                         

Disaster survivor Amy Frogge uses social media to show her flooded home
Photo by David Fine/FEMA
from Wikimedia Commons

   

Mouse

The mouse is dead.

I know this because my shoe,

And the foot it contains,

And all the weight of my body,

Now rest upon the rodent’s head.

Poor creature, his slowness and hunger,

And the poison I made available to him,

Drove him out of hiding,

Out into the middle of the room

Where a clumsy poet,  mind elsewhere,  with squinting eyes and uncertain step,

Squashed  him.

The odds of our unintended meeting are difficult to assess.

His  desperation is impossible to guess.

Looking with pity at calico  fur, motionless feet, 

Delicate whiskers, tiny eyes no longer sparkling,

I wonder who or what will step on me,

And when….

© George Phillips, 2016

Mouse, one month old
Picture uploaded by Roger McLassus
on Wikimedia Commons