I have statistics. I have stats. These people have been to bed with their parents.
—Lou Reed
At least as useless as they are useful,
bringing you news of hits that don’t land,
and others that bruise a sensitive blogger’s soul,
stats are distraction, not lunch. My blogger buddy Cathy
happened to mention a name-brand potato chip
and suddenly became popular with dips around the world.
Mention your foot the wrong way and get sex slave offers.
Careful how you post pics of yourself and watch your captions,
uninvited guests will be all up in your shit.
It changes how we write, with an eye
not to p’s and q’s but to keywords and tags.
You must get creative with titles, and sometimes
relinquish creativity. Toss out that clever title for
the attention grabbing:
STEPHEN KING SUCKS!
even if you’ve got nothing to say about Stephen King.
You’ve got to think about the playground repercussions,
like naming your kid Ky (that’s “sky” without the “s”):
YO JELLY! KY JELLY! HOW’S IT HANGIN’ KY JELLY!
Ugly pink things crawl out of hidden holes and squirm
around stats, slithering political pythons,
enemies you never knew you had,
curiosity seekers inserting unintended meanings
into your best intentions.
It doesn’t even matter if you think
you could eat just one and wonder
how much they’d be willing to bet you on that.
Or if your prose beats most people’s poetry any day
(who was it said that? I’ll google later),
because you really don’t give a fuck if somebody says,
THAT’S NOT POETRY THAT’S PROSE!
They may have come just to steal your profile pic anyway.
That’s how some get their adrenalin flowin’.
Me, I would never steal without crediting the source.
Someone googled a line from one of my poems,
I was flattered, and then I thought, wait a minute,
which came first? And maybe I got it from somewhere
else, and forgot, and thought it was mine.
Best to google every line before you hit post
these days, depending on how you get your kicks for living.
Maybe you like that sort of come-on. This ain’t a pitch,
I’m just saying….if you put jelly on your shoulders
and lie down on the carpet you never know
Yeah, this is such a paradise, this wild West of online self-publication and promotion. This is the vehicle that is bringing down the Industrial West, and we get to talk rosy poesy while wading in shit. Surely we must be in Dante's Inferno, paying dearly for our desire to be so known. Great poem, Mark. Me, I'm anonymoose, not for fear of exposure as much as knowing how little the messages of this medium mean. - "Brendan"
ReplyDeleteYes I really don't give a **** hahaha. I like the enemies I didn't know I had too, such fun commenting back to them. Web is surely a fickle place and yes the odd word can suck people in, but most of the time they dive into a garbage bin. Googling every line would be a task though, I'd rather just let things pop in my head and on I go. Tons of tricks people use too and most abuse them by the ton. Wow you really got me going on this one, I'll stop before this is a post too.
ReplyDeleteYou slice dice and warm up all the cold cuts in the delicatessen of the soul we're all strung out in, having that last midnight snack that lasts til dawn, meeting that person who never shows, trying to keep ourselves occupied and out of trouble, meeting instead the bums ducking in out of the cold, pickled in ego, words of random distribution grabbed and eaten to make identities just as random. Excellent piece, Mark. Blogger beware.
ReplyDeleteThis is unbelievable! i wrote a poem last week about stephen King sucking K Y out of slithering political pythons....
ReplyDeleteget your own material dude!
this is an interesting piece mark - plenty to think about - if you google a line you are bound to get hits - everything has already been done.
this idea prevented me from actually doing anything for ages -then i realised when i do it its better (tongue in cheek)than when they did it - dont sweat the haters mark - those that cant do... goolge
arron
So true... big brother really is watching, or something of that nature... worms, perhaps. I like this b/c I did some research on prescription pain killers for something I was writing and guess what? I started getting spam on how to buy them! Unbelievable...
ReplyDelete~laurie
ha...yes we live in a big world full of people trying to seel you the next big thing and willing to look in your window to see what they need to sell...and sometimes steal..have had several instance of other bloggers recently having their work republished elsewhere under someone elses name...crazy...
ReplyDeleteWow, I've been wondering why so many bloggers are requiring a confirmation word to post a comment. I did open a twitter acct out of curiosity and immediately began getting followers when I hadn't posted a word. What has bothered me is the nasty "new" meanings now found on Google for harmless old sayings that one might wish to use. As my little 4 year old grandaughter would say: "That's disgusting!" What a world! I don't usually get on a soapbox but couldn't help myself...(I daren't Google those phrases)
ReplyDeleteAaron, that is funny! LOL! Mark, are you talking about me man? 'cause that line I wrote last week, I swear I didn't know another poet used that man.... And I love Stephen King, so you better watch out 'cause Cujo and Christine and Carrie are going to be all "up in your shit" man...... And ok, so I write prose and pass it off as poetry...... We all have our little faults now don't we? And people have actually asked me to take my profile pic down, something about the aesthetics of the internet being lessened, or something, I don't know. But I don't think anyone will steal it.... And I could really use a sex slave. Can I please borrow your foot pic? Of course I would never steal without crediting the source, so I will just tell them that we are related and my foot is similar to yours. And that would not be lying completely, because I do have a foot. One foot. I just won't tell them that it is attached to my partially developed twin brother, which is really just a hairy lumpy mass attached to my left thigh. But I digress, back to stats.... mine suck. Please visit my page. Oh, yeah.... Carrie? Christine? Cujo? I just realized that Stephen King has a fetish for "C" names, doesn't he? OMG, what a needy bastard! Stephen King does suck! You're right dude..... You rock!
ReplyDeletei really enjoyed this. it's full of fears that are both true and nonsense, treated as both. stats are a challenge. what do they mean? what is my definition of success? mine change regularly.
ReplyDeletehey, i can only dream of someone liking my profile pic:) it's never happened. and i don't expect it will. there is a dark side to blogging and being a reader and creator. you're i-don't-give-a-shit energy is terrific. i admit i laughed at ky:)
Mark, was that supposed to be KY Jelly or strawberry? 'cause I've got strawberry jelly like all over the carpet man and the dog doesn't look like he's gonna be able to get it up.... Can you help a guy out here cuz the wife is gonna be home any minute now.... well, I guess it's better that she finds strawberry jelly instead of ky jelly, but it's still not gonna be pretty. Oh, man.... the dog just threw up some squirmy little ugly little pink thingy.... Oh JC! She just pulled in the drive man!
ReplyDeleteOk... you have me laughing... I so enjoyed this. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed this...and then I wondered should I be more paranoid about posting...and so on. A really good post, thank you.
ReplyDeleteSecond poetic rant I've read tonight. The air must be charged. Lovin' the electricity.
ReplyDeleteGreat roll on this rant, Mark. I read and thought, "hmm, I should be more careful" but, seriously, it takes too much effort to care. Stats...rules the world, don't they? I promise never to steal your fab lines!
ReplyDeleteAs an aside, I've refashioned my poem and thanked you for your comment (I was still working on it when you popped over). Ironically, my dVerse post is a prose piece (or is it poetry prose...lol!) I'm certain most wont read, oh well, call it what you like, I call it 'original angela' ha!
Lots of serious stuff here Mark..yet was nodding and grining all through... Yeah cyber stalkers... stealers..spoilers.. and stats... not worth the virtual ink they're printed in..
ReplyDeleteInteresting..my post this week takes another look at social media... no escaping...Enjoyed this.
Really? All that is going on?
ReplyDelete:-)
I enjoyed the "rant"... I used to care about it, but now, I don't care about key words. And its not only key words, it's also the images and pictures I post. Unknowingly, my "intimate pictures" draws the hits...yes, I get it now.
ReplyDeleteI look at the top bloggers and they don't even care about the way they write, key words nor even use pictures ...but they still draw the crowd. Blogging is more than just a business.
Wow Mark, I loved this piece! Its rang of such perfect truth of this whole 'blogosphere' we dwell in. Energetically we attract what we exude, you did a remarkable job creating that in this work. Thank you again for your kind words on my piece this week, appreciate it! ~ Rose
ReplyDeletethis is great poet rant and yes it is true the internet is so challenging and there is so much going on that guess people do not realize this one in the end.
ReplyDeletehttp://gatelesspassage.com/2011/09/13/a-new-life-begins/
Scary, really, isn't it? Trusting the unknown and yet, like driving the interstates, it's a calculated risk and one we have all been willing to take! Excellent piece. Gay
ReplyDeleteThanks everyone for stopping by.
ReplyDeleteArron: Sorry, but I've been saying Stephen King sucks the KY out of his readers' 0$@#fbn!!%**'s for years.
Ann: I don't know why more people on Blogger don't disable that useless feature, which is just an annoying hurdle for commenters - laziness I guess.
John: Fascinating analysis. Can I quote you?
Ed: I like your profile pic, I really do. I like bloggers who show me their face.
Angela: Poetry masquerading as prose is my thing, it's what I love most.
Hmmm... gonna think twice on what I next write.
ReplyDeleteSo, this is funny. I suppose I'm on the naive side of this whole world. I didn't even have my own email address outside of work situations until 3 years ago. I guess I better check to see if my blog has that useless feature you're talking about. I don't even know! :)
ReplyDeleteIsn't that the sad truth? Some of the search combinations that come up for my blog are creepy, almost as though they know me personally, but if they do, why don't they just come to my blog? Now, I want chips, name brand unnamed but bright yellow bag, original, not baked. :D
ReplyDeleteWonderful!
Good rant, totally agree. For me,poetry...prose, personally I like both and don't care as long as the piece is written well and interesting. There will always be the plagiarizers, the "pick-aparts" the "word-twisters," the ones who just don't "get it." Fortunately I know where the "Comment" delete buttons are and I know how to use them!! (Though have only had to do that once so far). And "Stats," what is the purpose exactly? 'Your poem got 32 "hits" and only 2 comments?' Ha!! ( Although I admit, I do like the map to see where the people are actually checking in from!)
ReplyDeleteGood points made in this, Mark. I too, will think twice about tags and pictures chosen.
Enjoyed this! And how much do stats really tell anyway? They certainly can't measure the impact of a piece!
ReplyDeleteWell I believe you had something to say, and said it you did. Great write. Stats drive me nuts in a Type A kind of way. Superb work. Much enjoyed.
ReplyDeleteUgly pink things crawl out of hidden holes and squirm
ReplyDeletearound stats, slithering political pythons,
enemies you never knew you had,
curiosity seekers inserting unintended meanings
into your best intentions
Great write! Does it matter poem? prose?
Your ending is fab as well.
Sometimes I wonder where the freedom of reading different meanings into a write went? Sometimes it's great that there are different layers and that your write can get people in places you didn't imagine.
And just for the sake of making a point: I really like your poetry 100%
You are definitely on a roll, Mark. (A little twinge for me re the profile pic comment. I need to do something about it, but, then again, I do love the birds & am not nearly so fond of pics of myself.) PS: re Spotify: I discovered, if you put yourself on the free waiting list, it probably won't take long to get an invite.
ReplyDeleteI really liked this Mark, it is as if you really let yourself connect & let go at the same time! ;)
ReplyDelete