Thursday, January 3, 2019

Recent Poem: BURYING OLD TWEETS AT SEA

listen
hear that sound?
it’s the muffled chug of the tugboat
cruising in the dead of night
to the deepest waters
ready to throw overboard
a giant petrified cloud
filled with microblog speech
with the potential to be weaponized
against the tweeter
who long ago woofed out
bad jokes on taboo topics
angry responses to alt-right trolls
unsafe-in-any-time sexist innuendoes
remarks written/entered in haste
and now rendered officially deceased–
especially if the tweeter works 
for an entertainment company minnow
swallowed by a multinational corporation
>
in the 40s,
Hollywood got scared
censored itself
threw people out of work
over speech on taboo political beliefs
which could be weaponized 
by The Other Side
>
in the late 2010s,
Hollywood gets scared again
censoring itself
scared of the alt-right
frightened by the Murdoch Press
people thrown out of work again
yet more cyber hand-wringing
about what The Other Side can do
with ancient posts from people
who changed and moved on 
faster than the censorious-minded
ever will

No comments:

Post a Comment