by Alexandra Messick-Kopel
How can I compete
With teeming tabs and tabs
squeezing attention spans
with Buzzfeed buzz and nearly news
knotting thoughts, freeing focus loose?
Before I pinned the thought down
google has rendered it found
why try to merge words
when you can press search!
With edible eye candy on a bright glass screen
who will spend the time to defer just what I mean?
Connecting billions with little bits and bites
computing faster than the dimming of a light.
How can I compete?
Catching click after click
but gone in seconds quick
No one will remain
How can I retain?
Eyes gone before I finish this refrain
before I put words on this page
Why take the time to get it right?
Why waste my hours or my days?
Ashes of poets are scattered on this web
bodies of their work buried with the dead
waiting for your glances waiting to be read
you must give them life, you must give them thought
all that work and all that strife just to die for nought
their fervor on their pages lingers
Their words crave the salt of fingers
their bindings need a bending
their covers need some lending
pages need a tear, margins a mark
sentences a stare, ideas a spark
Calling from underground
begging to be open
wailing words of silent sounds
that will go on never spoken.
How can I compete?
when the greats are left for dead
and all has been said and unsaid
with thirty letter tweets and inane reddit threads
with mindless Facebook feeds and articles unread
When talking through glass is widespread
and touching has darkened into dread.
With phones fastened to arms, a third hand
moments captured by cameras, a third eye
our questions answered on demand
posting photos on Flickr as life flickers by.
How can I compete?
when children will google to know
about the tiny glints on snow
and the way leaves color trees
how vines breathe in a breeze
how beauty brings and the way spring springs
how life sings with a voice of flowered things.
How a world exists beyond their glass
beyond their search, beyond their pasts
while they sit behind their desks, behind their screens
viewing the world in windows of their drowned submarines.
All around, laughter blows soft and rises into clouds,
dear winds gently waft and sadness seeps in grounds.
If they take the buds out of their ears
they’ll catch the flowers crying stop!
This is life! I am here!
This is meaning! This is cost!
Time drips down into little droplets in a well
life spins all around but none of them can tell.
How can I compete?
when you’ve left this page
before I’ve fixed a phrase
when you scroll faster than eyes gage
when books belong to a forgotten age
when movies move faster than my words move minds
when email checks have checked away all your time
when my only reader is my ego and my pride
when the heroes of poetry have long ago died
when all has been stated and created and restated even more
how can I compete
with this slow outdated form?