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)….