Poem of the Month
Internetahlagy

By Tanya Evanson

Published on June 3, 2019

Before Records or RAM, radio, radiation
We had slowness. A real root directory. We were tight with the world.

Now, we’re in all probability cloud inline, online. Yin Yang binary
Numbers in time. Fractions of our former, warmer selves.

We like. We link. We love. We save. Silently.
Collectively suckling our baby, Internetahlagy.

Our baby has meta-emotions. Baby’s got emotions about emotions.
Data about data. Wind about wind.

Baby be metaphysical. Physical without being physical.
Mindful without being mindful, and even more then.

You, me and baby, we move so little but we travel so great.
World moves beyond world at this rate.

Non-stop-this, sidewalk-that, we are walking heads down at clay tablets
Sumerian-style. Extinct papyrus out.

Is this singularity? Are we merging with artificiality?
Machine versus Mind. Nanonaked. Divine.

Will you tap my arm to expose USB porn?
Frontal lobe googlehorn, I’m googling as I speak.

Cloud computing as I eat. Instagramming in my sleep.
All the googalicious googlelatarians feast.

Eat my Facebook! Tweet, swallows, tweet. Tweet tweet.
We like. We link. We love. We save. Silently. Internetahlagy.

We get juice from a box made from oil, sand and farts.
Silicon chip make we blue-lit. A hard drive from the sun.

Finger-tappin. Interwebbin. Radiatin.
Far from fire. O how I miss the time

When palms touched nothing to tell a tale and the light was a fire
Between us. We could really see what we were saying.

We like. We link. We love. We save. Silently.
Internetahlagy. Internetahlagy.

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Its steady hands reckoning our course around the face of time make me uneasily aware of my mortality and yours. From vague gazes and half-finished sentences the humming of our travel clock coaxes us to parables, morals, cautionary tales.

Yorick

Bookending our VHS library In the basement closet, beside ski suits, Is our family’s one-man Capuchin Crypt, A skull Dad kept from med school that just sits, Waiting to be played with, bored, unburied.