Filling the Internet with Poetry

Simplicity itself.
Pick a poet and post a piece to prettify your profile. Propagate.
I stared, slack-jawed. My friends joined with their friends, their friends’ friends.
The potential is exponential.

A throng of iambs, dactyls, trochees, anapaests
Galloped after each other in a jumble of rhythms
Broke through entrenched ideas,
Cascaded into our collective consciousness.

As the momentum took its course,
Billions logged on. The power surge
Transcended cultural, racial, national boundaries
Inspired a new generation.

An epiphany of language
The Word, Das Wort, Le Mot, Un Vocabolo.
A worldwide tsunami of alliteration, metaphor, hyperbolae and simile
To rival Hokusai’s Great Wave.

A life-affirming explosion of images
Allowed us to see the world in a new light
Shattered barriers to acceptance
Narrow-minded nationalism nullified.

Faced with a constant barrage of ideas,
Intelligence services were inundated.
A guerrilla attack by the power of poets,
True legislators of the world.

What did they make of it all on Menwith Hill?
Sir, Sonnet CXXV is proving most problematic.
A love poem to a young man, warning of mortality, Ozymandias.
But what figures the shadowy informant in the final couplet?

Epilogue

Then there are the others, the unvoiced billions
To whom the idea of broadband is meaningless, magical.
Their only priority: something to eat and clean water.
It would take a revolution for them to be included.

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You can read some more of my poetry in ‘Little Red Poetry’. All proceeds go to build a new party for ordinary people, against cuts and privatisation.

Copies are also available from Left Books

Tags: internet, mortality, poetry, Snowden, sonnet, surveillance