The trouble with writing a
relationship through technology
is that the bygones are never gone.

Why do I pour a drink in your absence
and settle to re-read our old fights, heartbreaks
like *******, lips parted, heart racing?

I shudder through those weeks where you petted me, darling
but could scarcely afford to feed me the same heart
being doggedly masticated in the maw of another
I trace over my retinas the lines where you didn't,
wouldn't, couldn't love me, they scan me
for my identity.
My mug shot, beside
hers.

After how little it meant, how can you possibly love me now?

I could edit these now, you know, you're able to do that.
Everything I wish I had been and said.
The pages left blank, I should've painted red.

In the spaces, hiatuses, I recall your ill-suited suitors
I can't tell whether I feel grief, jealousy, or ecstasy.
At the time, you know, it was like falling upon
The Secret Garden
unbefouled by poison nor passion
to inhale the heady scent of white rose
and discover the brim of someone else's hat beneath the foliage.
The place wasn't secret. Oh, it wasn't mine. Never ever was mine.

I'm ahead of myself. Oh, for want of technology.
We courted on Facebook and Gmail,
it was a convenient torture, given the circumstances.

Now my mate belongs where I do.
Loving, tenderly, wisely true.

I cannot start loading the page for the future
so much as delete our archive,
a prelude to love
written in diminished chords,
sung by the jilted and ghosts.

My smartphone got an upgrade,
now, between us, things are tense:
Siri, knowing she's superior,
has abandoned all pretense.

I asked Siri to hail a cab
when I was in New York
She told me I was getting fat,
and advised me I should walk.

Often Siri drops my calls
proclaiming I'm a bore.
(True, she's heard me tell that tale
a dozen times before.)

I wrote a "*** text" to my love
while walking in the park.
Siri sent it to my mother
and thought it quite the lark.

I bought this phone because her apps
are very useful things,
Now I live in constant dread
each time the **** thing rings.

My Smartphone got an upgrade
and, between us, things got terse,
but we're married by the contract
for better or for worse.

I should have bought an Android phone-
I'm sure we'd get along-
My iphone's much too uppity-
something's Siriously wrong

The laptop heats my thighs
as I pursue your imprint.
Google throws up 16,300,000 results in 0.12 seconds.
Facebook delivers a hoard of possible yous.

You are an elusive ghost
in a city of doppelgangers,
always just disappearing
around the corner.

Each click is like
a tap on the shoulder in a crowded street:
the face revealed is never yours.  But there
you go again, breezing past
in the opposite direction.

I am Breathless: I am
The Man Who Loved Women.

I give up: the Diana Wright who is a **** star
is not you, but is quite distracting.
And I can't type poetry with one hand.

1
Congratulations
on your maturation:
now our lust's "love,"
not infatuation.

2
Romantic "deficits,"
confiscatorial "trends" --
**** your "benefits" --
where's my dividends?

3
I tried to really kiss you,
not co-impregnate a tissue.

4
I must confess
I love that dress --

more or less!

5
-- I'd die for you (you said)
-- I'd mumble you in bed.

6
you  me  us  me
us-me-you  you-me-us-you-me-you
us-me-us-­meyouyou-us-youyouyou
youyou-us-me-youyouyouyouyouyouyou!
you-me-­us-us-me-me-me --
us

7
Three coins in the fountain?
Who in hell's been counting?

8
Nod, smile; I'm playing along
while they're "playing our song."

9
Monogamy
demands its peephole:
Maybe we should see
other people.

10
"The last time I saw her
she'd hired a lawyer."

The news comes to us
Running all around
Coming from the air
And from the ground.

Happy news sad news,
Any type of feed,
Computers are shoes,
Running us what we need.

You can surf it you can scroll it,
Or even search google
You can find the perfect color
To match you white poodle.

You search all day,
And even all night,
And the results are run to you,
Like they are running from a fight.

You can search sitting down,
You can search standing up,
You can search foreign languages,
On how to say whats up.

Want to impress you girlfriend,
Show her you can cook,
Pull up a recipe on google,
You don’t have to search a book.
Want the newest fashion news,
And the newest styles,
They are only a click away,
Within the internet files.

Shoes are the foundation,
That we live on every day,
And computers are that foundation,
That we use everyday.

Computers run information,
Going and coming to and fro,
They can tell you the directions,
for where you want to go.

Computers are shoes,
They are solids we rely on,
You can use them for your homework,
To find a certain ion.

So this poem is over now,
And I think you get my point,
Computer are shoes,
This is my poem joint.

I have, on my computer,
two sound generating devices
which I meditate on
for healing reasons
and I am on
a Dharma network
which has photographs
of Yantras, which are those
geometrical designs
that I meditate on
for healing reasons
and I don't know
if I am healed by these things
or not
but it sure is a trip!

My phone has been hacked,
I feel gladdened to know, that
Someone's interested,
In what paltry things I say,
To my mother.

I computer

Woken, I push my start button and reboot to the shower
For breakfast a bowl of italics, **** no milk, memory needs upgrading
Then to my automated job in my automated life
My thoughts are in word ,then filed in documents
My moods change with every toolbar, features and characters
I choose daily from my vast database
At 8.59 and 58 seconds precisely I am surfing
That vast blackness of space, I am never alone
Our names are inscribed on the dark side of the moon
On the super highway at full throttle of 32mb
My attention was distracted by a **** blue from clip art
Suddenly I did not see a stationary font (size 28)
After the crash they laid me out on a spreadsheet
My life deleted, my soul sent to the recycle bin.

Hi, below I copy a humorous hiabun, which I shared as an exercise to mentor enquiring and inspired poets to learn, so they might adopt and try different techniques and then give critique together with awesome comments... Yes, I used the words ***, ****** and **** for context the rest was left to an individual imagination as in good poetry!

It included reflective commentary encompasses innocent classification terminology used in the critique, reading, examining, appreciating, understanding and writing of poetry for example: POETIC DEVICES (enjambement, duality, keriji, images, collocation, semantic, oxymoron, repetition, listing etc.), STORY (personification, characterisation, subject, context, voice etc.), IMAGERY (synaesthesia), STRUCTURE ( lineation, breaks, syntactic etc.), SOUNDS (syllables, rhyme, alliteration, pace, musicality, phrasing, beat, assonance, onomatopoeia, mouthed rhythms, patterned) and WORDS (preposition, determiner, verbs, adverbs, lexical, nouns, adjectives) used by poets, critics and academics...

And here it is :

****** tongue-in-cheek haibun - a reflective commentary on writing a popular tanka

Eye lashes flicker
a shared urgent interest
parting - dancing smile


My first inspiration was ***, passionate life squeezing screaming ***, the thumping wall musicality of ***, exhaustingly inventive sweaty and wet.

I wanted to make it a senryu but for duality the female characterisation demanded two more lines each extending to seven syllables.  

Arousing images captured her moaning splashing loneliness in unusual collocation.

I was first excited by the placement of a hovering extended enjambement to give life to my final line, whilst also considering the satisfaction in using noisy mouthed rhythms.  

I believe I easily hid the wet aroused context with a watery semantic field, that suggested she would choke and drown.

So in my last line I had ‘pleasures’ as a cutting keriji to make clear the dominating ****** context, having previously used a preposition and determiner to maintain duality!


Exhausted shivers
in windowed naked currents
unfolding sinking
then surfing vital wavelets
drowning screams - pleasures wet bite

I did not know her then
nor do I now
but in between, I did

She swam for Barbados
fluid young islander
of affluent Germanic descent

Adrift, cultures island sought
she surfaces, bobbing
in the Red Dragon’s wake

House on the Bay,
overflowing camper van, brim
full of friends and fun

Over the Bridge
splashing loneliness, diving
into my bath and bed

Floating alone
undercurrents scratch, tides
sandy icing of memories

Locked lapping Bay days
drag
piloting others fun

sea blue horizons
debentures sold, goodbyes told
surf Ahoy

She jumps far flung
fun soaked, to sail
the Bay of Islands

.

Every time,
I try to think of something else;
And every time,
I end up thinking of the same;
The times I've spent
Back home where I belong;
I've been driven out,
Yet I'm the one to blame.
I never knew what I had,
But I do now,
Those words that I may
Never say again;
The people met, or memories
Relived are not forgotten
By this astray,
Regretting dame.

--Sam S.