One More Down The Conveyor

Are my eyes picking up the light from this screen

Or is the screen drinking in my light?

I’ve been at it all day again

All. Damn. Day.

Hunched over the keys in this ratty old chair

Working my way through yet another pot of coffee

And filling up the filthy glass ashtray

There are so few people in my life

In real life

It’s got to be good for me to interact online

But damn

So many hours of nothing but computing

Today I am a poetry machine

I found a site replete with ideas of what to write about

And I’ve been cranking out poems one after the other

Over a dozen other users of the site have commented kindly on my work

Strokes the old ego, no bones about it

Thing is, this idea site I’m using actually forces you to read other people’s poetry

It’s brilliant, really, how it works

For every poem you submit, you have to comment on two others

So I know that these dozen comments I’ve gotten are somewhat…

Artificial? Superficial? What do you call a mandatory compliment?

At least you get to pick which poems you feel like remarking on

They picked mine. That much is true

Every time I finish a poem and submit it to the site

I’m prompted to share it throughout my social networks

And I do. Sure – why not?

I check every once in a while to see whether anyone’s liked my Facebook posts

Or favorited or retweeted me on Twitter

How is it that this is simultaneously so supercool and so pitiful?

I’m engaged in the creation of a species of art

And not in a vacuum; I have an audience

Yet there’s something so contrived about the whole process

And technology has a way of cheapening art, doesn’t it

Plus there’s desperation in my bidding for and lapping up attention

I have thousands of followers on Twitter

My Facebook posts show up in scads of people’s feeds

My social networking popularity is not because of my poems

One of my hobbies  is seeking out contests and giveaways all over the web

And tweeting and posting about where and how to enter them

That’s how I built up such a substantial following

Everybody loves a chance at something for nothing

So but now I’m ticker-taping all these giveaway enthusiasts with poetry

Art-spamming the prize-seekers

I just traded the coffee mug for a brandy snifter

Which will put me to bed before long

A whole damn lonesome day of conveyor belt poetry

How fraught with paradox, how queer, how postmodern