I welcome the gathering news
of social media's incompatib-
ility with society. A letter
in a familiar hand was never
out of synch with communica-
tion, yet today I doubt that
anyone under 50 can identify
the handwriting of anyone he
knows. Everyone known to us,
whose hand we'd know, seems
not to be with us, anymore.
Say, who is touched anymore.
For whose message would one
drop everything, to give it
pride of reception's place,
to credit its concentration,
in a caesura of acceptance?
That feature of one's pace
is revealed as the place of
the capacity for friendship.
Longhand, postage, transit.
Where's their obsolescence?
And what burdens our habits
have placed, one would rath-
er not assess - on poetry,
literally to furnish those
sentiments, scalded or scrap-
ped altogether from us - not
to mention, on policy, those
evolutions of reflection, un-
known beneath an OLED screen.
Worse, naturally, is the de-
fault to hired practitioners
by atrophy of one's own hand.
Worse, naturally, is the in-
experience of time, itself,
in spews of prestidigitation,
compared with crossing a T.
Worse, naturally, is the e-
rasure of life's tangibility.
In every way, the letter is
closer to the being, the foil
of alienation, of absences.
Shape a vowel, hear the image,
draw a breath. Sounds normal
enough, in memory.
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