Oh
doodle-ghosts,
made up imps,
personal polterjerks,
stop haunting me.
Now.

When I created you to explain
broken locks, jammed signals,
all the damaged et ceteras
of living, I was mostly joking.

I doodled you on a pad, 
left it where it could be found,
said it was a self portrait,
and she thought
I was pretty funny.

Doodle-ghosts,
I’m sorry I blamed you for 
anything at all.  For my tardiness,
my forgetfulness.  For my 
clumsiness and small rages
and lingering traces of war-thirst
I tried to drown now and again…
tried to make a joke out of them,
blame them on you…

too many years of that and
as she said as she left,
it wasn’t you,
it certainly wasn’t her,
it was me.  

Now I’m alone,
and the house is knocking
like a furnace.  I gave you life
and I know you’re behind the noise,
doodle-ghosts, though
if it burns tonight
I will blame only myself
for being
driven crazy
by you.

On Facebook,
there is a man
who has 1500 friends.

When he
counts his friends he has to use
everyone’s hands to do it.

Of the 1500 people this man calls friends
there are approximately 800
who he has met personally.

Of those 800,
he’s had more than passing conversations
with maybe 200.

Of those 200,
he’s had longer
and more confidential conversations
with perhaps 40.

Of those 40, there are perhaps 15
who are “friends”
in the sense of the word
that existed prior to the year 2006.

1500 friends —
800 he’s seen,
400 he’s spoken with in meatspace,
200 he’s connected with,
40 he would tell this story to,
15 who would agree with him
but for the fact
that they are vanishing.

The man one day
decides to read
a three volume unfinished novel
titled “A Man Without Qualities.”
He opens the first book,
closes it,
opens it again.  He
is trying to understand

a book, three volumes long
and still unfinished
about a man
who is nothing but what
he is given to be by others.

The book will sit on his bedside table
unopened for long spells
as he talks to 1500 friends online.

If there is a Quality
to “friendship”
it shall be absorbed into
a cloud.
It shall be absorbed.

If he wants to speak
to those 15 vanished friends,
he will have to learn a new word
with which to summon them.

Tags: poems, poetry, meditations