oregonnerd: differing views

about names from a different direction

May 1, 2008 at 3:50 am Leave a comment

What follows is actual current poetry.  It is intended to follow in format the poem made of 100 poems that’s posted elsewhere (the Radio Weblog for oregonnerd, that as yet I can’t access); the original was supposed to be written in 100 days, and took me 10.  I expect something between 10 and 20 but make no bold statements, even that it’ll make it to 100 segments.

It’s actually about the big splash about “social networking” as something that apparently didn’t exist before the invention of the web.  Odd.  I thought a social network was a group of individuals who passed information of various types to each other in a somewhat organized fashion–from gangs to poetry clubs to “the guys that meet at [the local bar]”.  I mean, the intended mega-poem is.  About social networking, misnomers…and the kind of society that uses these interesting changes in the language–such as a ‘transparent ploy’ being the same thing as an ‘invisible ploy’.  Suddenly we have management actually talking about how they want their changes to show when they mean that they want their seamless changeover to be, well, invisible.

Anyway.

names’ ledgers

though we
perforce
each day name
each other anew

while yet attempting
to see through yesterdays’
lensed assumptions

and as we struggle
toiled and entrapped, entwined
(sysiphus and gorgon at once)

we become
again
our names, our
damned names

———————————

Glenn

Entry filed under: current news, poetry, writing and thought. Tags: commentary, communication, definition, misuse of the english language, poetry, social networks.