Monday, April 15, 2013

15/30: social media and friendships

Verily I say unto you:
We live in some technological times.
Social media - a phrase
nobody had even heard a few years ago -
is now this Thing, this whole business -
the internet is fucking weird, y'all.
Point to the internet on the map.
Tell me what color it is, what shape,
how much does it weigh, how does it feel
to the touch?  It isn't even real, it's
ones and zeros and electricity and wires
and what would we do, at this point,
all of us, if they took it away?

And now, because of it, friendships
don't have to fade.  We cling to them
like the wisps of so many dreams upon waking,
trying to keep hold even as they slip
through our fingers.
My friends have children
that I've never met, and yet
I saw their first steps, haircuts, saw them fresh
from the oven without ever going near
a hospital.  Jeff and his family, who gave me
sunshine in the tundra, and I've seen their engagements,
weddings, children, but haven't been to visit
in years.  This friend with whom I wrote songs
is still playing with his brother and father,
their perfect patchwork family making music
together for us all.  Linda who lives
on a mountain and before her mother died
had four generations of women up there.
Linda who grows her own vegetables, takes walks
in the sunshine in the woods with her dogs, Linda
who, with her daughter and granddaughter, hold
a piece of my heart on a shelf, will I ever
scale that summit again?  And Melissa, sweet
Melissa, who saved me in Mexico, kept
my dry heart beating, shared food, shared dances
shared stories of lovers, shared drink and smoke,
my sister, my love, and I think of her and there's a wisp
of a memory I'm grasping tight, refusing to let go,
the day we went to the grocery and bought
bocadillos, tomatoes, meat and cheese and they forgot
to charge us for the carafe of wine cheap to some
but a splurge for us and we made sandwiches
in her sunshine apartment and snuck it all in
to the discount student theater and watched
a French movie with Spanish subtitles and we ate
and we drank and in that sacred moment
our friendship was forever.

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