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Facebook didn’t depose Mubarak
  the army deposed Mubarak
    with the help of unarmed people

Facebook doesn’t depose
  it poses
    but in Egypt it was better than the telephone
      and it still is in countries
        where the police isn’t on Facebook yet
          (there is no such country: Facebook is the police)

in the U.S. where everybody is on Facebook
  pretending to be just hanging out
    discussing the quirks of their dogs
      their tastes in music and what they want in a mate
        Facebook is just pixel puff off a virtual dog
          its data bots eat your brain and make you buy stuff
and if you make a move that looks vaguely human Facebook arrests you
  and connects you to Twitter LinkedIn and other social groups
    where communication will rehabilitate you

for a writer Facebook is especially deadly
  a novelist mining for stories will run only into lies
    there are no smells and no skin
a poet is quickly bored by the nanitudes mouthed there
  an essayist meets there only herm public face
    and whatever looked real in reality
      (which wasn't much)
is secretly spirited away from your soul and made into zuckerbergs

mr zuckerberg laughs all the way to the bank as he eats them
  it’s always sunny on sugar mountain

I quit Facebook
  I felt lighter already
    I looked for my friends at the bar
      couldn't find them
but look: a real dog is falling in love with a fire hydrant!

FACEBOOK REDUX

silver & gossamer & porcelain & cobwebs
some people are made out of
they walk from here to there
a limited number of times only—
but the bony phone is just dumb plastic
it rings not at all

i don't understand: my ideas are universal
but my audience is five guys at the shell
station people just don't get it

she longs for what makes her grin
(tînjeşte dupâ ce rînjeşte)
the sweetness of want
the repulsiveness of having
after days she was returned
by the storms of language
that had tossed her far
& she rearranged her face
for the english language—

what i heard i did not hear
what i saw i did not see
i trust my sense to dullness then
i kill my joy & cease to be

Houses, Scams, Language (with a line in romanian)

is all wrong, ed

what poets now live
where they say they do
where they started out
where they want to

half the midwesterners
did time in new york
the other half in california

only new yorkers write
as if they are from new york
and mostly they are not

the ones in california
were wounded elsewhere
when they feel better
or can't afford the rent
they'll go back where
they came from

this is america
you get hurt where you are born
you make poetry out of it
as far from home as you can get
you die somewhere in between

the only geography of poets
is greyhound
general motors rules them all
ubi patria ibi bene
or ibi bene ubi patria
bread out of nostalgia
not a lot of it either
some of us came from very far
maps don't help much

A Geography of Poets

 Andrei Codrescu