Thursday, February 2, 2017

Thinking About a Facebook Post by Jasmine Dreame Wagner


Why does it seem it’s easier to spew hatred and divisiveness in a tweet
While love needs a few paragraphs (of verses) to clean up the mess?

No matter what you tweet, it misrepresents?

You put a tweet up about Trump,
But you better put 6 or 7 up at the same time
For a sense of psychic balance
(maybe then you’ll feel free
not to always post to “weigh in”
and can take a much needed vacation from social media)—

coz you know that tweeting about Trump
alienates some of your “friends” or “followers”
and not because they’re not afraid
of the Goldman Sachs agenda & Bannon’s globalized race war
(Devos and the Carl Jrs. Management Fox Guarding the Labor Henhouse)

but because they came to social media
more for the local struggle
(evictions, displacements, and the cultural consequences)
which will bore those who say NATIONAL TRUMPS LOCAL
and even anger them because despite the mayor’s atrocities
that have parallels to the Israeli illegal settlements in Jerusalem
and the process Spanish missionaries began with the native Californians,
she at least is a Democrat and it's  a sanctuary city (in name)….

Or because they came here to talk and share music
Or because they’re more interested in toppling the technocracy
And others are professional colleagues
And you can’t find the perfect tweet
That appeals to all of them beyond lowest common denominator
(even the selfies of foodies’ food become political)

and you wanna curse specialization again
and you get nostalgic for a time before social media
when you could talk to musicians one way
and to poets another, or the Hillary supporters
one way, and the Bernie supporters another
& it wasn’t seen as a contradiction or hypocrisy

because you weren’t forced to mix it all up
in the reactive mind of “immediate gratification”
as if it “takes too long” for the translation
bridge to be built between social scenes 
that could go beyond the transient 
(that well crafted 3 minute
tune too bulky not to compete with a tweet
and who needs a home if you got a cell)

and though this isn’t contemplative enough
to be a poem, that doesn’t mean
it’s short enough for a tweet,
though perhaps I could pay some geek
at the Genuis Bar to translate it all to 147 characters

(each letter or space a three dimensional one,
and surely somewhere there's a benevolent force
to veer the tragedy toward comedy)….