Social Media

 

I once knew a kid who committed social media suicide.

I know what you’re thinking, and no.

Yes; he’s still breathing and seeing pretty sunsets and all like the rest of us who’ve learned there’s a smile in the sun, we who’ve learnt to look from, like moon to sun, fractal of a thoughtless awestruck wonder like lightning flashing constant miracles –

just to be alive; and not on social media any longer. That’s about what he did. He committed social media suicide (and felt so alive!) : posting strange photos of his hand out the window with stranger captions like, ‘freedom of the hand’. And the band of youth among him, raised in an online world deconstructed his free behavior as something just down right fucking crazy, that’s what they called him, crazy –

for posting photos online of his hand out the window. Like the most pleasant thing in the world couldn’t be, even for a moment, feeling your own hand out the window of a car going near 70 on a freeway, listening to Beethoven and pretending to play the keys while the thousand voiced song of the wind blows your hand like a free little fleshy kite.

So all the kids unfollowed him and secretly went to look at his page all the time anyway / till he stopped posting photos and people forgot he existed. And to me it seemed maybe only he really existed.

–

And i wondered what it’d be like. Because i heard it all through my friend.

I’d go over and he’d play guitar and i can even recall an evening outside under the tall whispy twilight fingers of the palm waving from above and bluely lit, i’d tried to write a poem about the green of the otherside and just couldn’t even do it. I tried writing the poem into the pages of my little black notebook and i thrashed like a animal but only in my mind. All that was left on the page was

“The green of the otherside

Why I with blue

Am bound to the eyes, when a sun could pass through,

And together

We’d be fresh as spring”

Or something like that, but i’d crossed most of it all out and just left

“Green otherside

Blue eyes”

–

And that felt best anyway, because it was about this girl i knew for two months and time didn’t matter anyway because the moment: i remember the wood door threw open and the little window panes like luminescent cathedral stained glass grew back, crackling night light into the unveiling of a woman sitting on her knees on the carpet, she turned to to look into my eyes, and everything zoomed to only her eyes:

I fell into the sea as only a droplet, i became everything in her eyes and she became everything in mine and i knew i loved her well; and the only way to say it was those words:

“Green otherside

Blue eyes”

And i’d be frustrated anyway because that was all i could say and so call me a poet if it took more years than words to say how one moment made me feel exactly. – But as i’d be walking back through the twilight, through the sliding screen glass door, and into the reverberating echo chamber of my friends room. He’d look up at me from the guitar and back down to the guitar, the chords would jumble a bit and speed up past rhythm and then settle back down again after a few moments. He’d just play back and forth a few sounds forever.

Then suddenly i’d hear the electric cord pull out of the amp and he’d play the electric acoustic for a bit.

Like the thunder of thunder, or the moon to the moon.

–

I’d just sit and listen, look out the window or watch how he played, making me think about that feeling, those short memories in my head of green.

And he’d let the twang of a string play out into the void. Turn to me and say “you hear about that kid from school who’s committing social media suicide?”

–

Don’t take a picture if you happen to see a hand out the window – reaching for yours, like the draw of someone’s eye. Just be there.

Smile with the sun. Write a poem in moonlight. Make a song.

Color your whole life to find that one color.

Just feel that feeling.

–

There’s always a prettier sunrise than the last sunset. And a prettier sunset than the last sunrise.

Basically i’m saying: it gets better, its probably better already than you think.

–

I was out on a walk and i saw that kid – he quietly laid in the flower field meadow watching sunset.