ODE to BEFORE…
I am Free…
…just as I used to be,
always was, back in those halcyon days of Before…
…FREE of Facebook, of the dim intrusive wits of Tweeter and twit, of frivolous social media
that are not true-facts media, are not teaching-learning media, or understanding-wisdom media,
that are all such usefully exploitive media for spreading trivia, falsity and ill will among us…
…FREE of those abbrevious little so-called text message snippets, mostly unimportant,
and peckpecktapping like a fool on much-too-tiny alphabets
that strain my perfectly good post-cataract eyes and trusty old shaky hand
that have all served me so well, so far…
… FREE of Mailchimps and webstores and come-try-me “freeapps,”
of infinitely propagating online “helpers” that only purport to help,
each mindlessly thinking itself something unthinkingly styled a “platform”
with its own particular silly rules all “users” must unthinkingly stop their lives to learn,
dreamed up and made up by ambitious non-matured brightboys with very little useful to do,
app-app platforms to give in to, robbing priceless thinking time, our precious contemplation…
… FREE of constantly distractingly preoccupiedly wondering
what! just might have just now arrived on one’s ubiquitous cellphone,
since just the last time one looked just some endless moments ago,
something that just might have just arrived just as one wasn’t looking, oh-my…
… FREE of meaningless silly thingies, of lastingly mindless non-values,
that distract and divert and waste our most precious resource, which is us…
… FREE of obsessing over the latest petulant vile tweets,
the newest ones that came since those other latest angry divisive vile tweets
by that selfish chump that self serving uninformed self-obsessed scowling
whining bloviating imposter fake who wants all my attention, all of it,
but cannot have it because, among other things, I choose to be…
…FREE of unthinkingly acceding to non-essential technocrap my lifestyle decidedly
does not does not does not does not does not need much less require…
…FREE of trendy silly milly Siri Alex Cortana Assistant et al, of reacting
like a reactionary, that would rob my freedom to Choose all of my own ways, all of them,
to read genuinely thoughtful magazines, and newspapers before they totally degrade and vanish,
and be as eccentric as I please—a modest singularity disliking of excessive individualism
that fails to remember its existentially Helpful Purpose as a Part of THE WHOLE.
Just like Before, perhaps now a tad more than Before,
I AM FREE.
William D. Coffey
