Song of My Selfie

This Thursday I will be posting Tamara Safford's art, but today I thought I'd include this satirical extra by Ethan Goffman.  Enjoy!

Song of My Selfie

(Walt Whitman updated for the 21^st Century)

I celebrate myself and Google myself

and what I become you shall read about

Every day on my Facebook page

I have heard what the bloggers were blogging, the blogs of how my side is right and yours

Is narrow minded socialist Nazis

Loafe with me on the virtual grass

Be intoxicated by the grass, not of the ‘60s but of the computer age

Get high, not on mountains, but on photos of mountains

With stimulating background music

A child said what is the virtual grass, summoning it with a click of the mouse

How could I answer the child?  I did not know any more than he.

I guess it must be the stuff created by the Asian IT people

Who studied math and engineering and higher philosophies

than are found on a million Facebook pages

Every image dredged up by me

From the unspoken depths of the internet

Is hearty and clear and pure and good

Not an inch or a half an inch is vile

For the human body is, indeed, beautiful

Though I erase it quickly should someone else walk into the room

I peruse manifold objects with minimal Google terms

And every one good, each perfect in the instant of its recreation and dissolution

At my whim, I am a virtual god and am good in each of my downloads

Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess

The secrets of my day in brazen detail

When I awoke, who I had lunch with, what convenience food I am having for dinner

A smiling photo of me and my lunch companion

A photo of my cat, asleep on the couch

What causes I support, what petitions I have taken 10 seconds to sign

A photo of me with the cat on my lap

What I think of the latest pop sensation

What I thought of the previous pop sensation

A photo of my cat, asleep on the bed

Am I petty and redundant?

Very well, then, I’m petty and redundant.

I am small, I contain platitudes

For your listening pleasure, the poet has recommended these tracks, starting with Madonna's "Material Girl," moving to Nellie McKay singing "It's a Pose" on Conan O'Brien's show, and finishing with some Malcolm Daiglish, whom he finds to be Whitmanesque.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNSUOFgj97M

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaEpPtJ_900
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmu3CpNAaKQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfxcKK9bvaw

Below is a picture of my cats.  You recognize Thelma; the calico is Callie.