Do These Words Matter?
A Poem
I don’t know what happened
How writing became “writing”
and the lure of clicks and claps
and back pats and warm cyber embraces
overtook the emphasis of the actual words
leaving us all struggling in different ways
because the world is hell-bent
on marketing itself through a Facebook ad
or mass text, instead of looking us in the eye
and telling us that it isn’t really interested
in our personality or our background
but that it would like access to our data
And now “writers” don’t care if someone
sleeps with their book next to them and
cradles it like the second coming of
whatever Lord you believe in or pray to
because they would rather get a
solid review on Amazon, even if you haven’t
read their book or even the cover or even
the dust jacket or even the preface
Because that review can help them earn more
from publishing companies who made them
do all of the work on social media
scrawling out excerpts in short bursts
to market themselves and their words
in an arena with a bunch of shouting fans
who don’t care about the words on the page
they just want to have a slap fight on the Internet
