Get ready with me
I spend a lot of time on tiktok actually, but not posting. I'm not really into livestreaming my life like people do, posting my face all over the internet, but I understand that that's what pleases the algorithms. Parasocial relationships and heightened emotionality drive views, draw people in and take them on a journey– a lot of media is like that now, which is why I hadn't heard of a famous spoken word poet until their passing. I don't want to be dragged around by my feelings by anyone, not at a slam, not by a bot, not through my device. There's more emotion in it than I can process all at once, I want more time and space.
And yet, it does still feel like the freest way to communicate sometimes. I used to put poems on stickers and paste them around the city, or print out tiny chapbooks to trade in the mail, share at readings. I just want to share what comes through and this feels like the easiest way. Idk how people do it actually, maybe I don't have the tech skills or whatever, my file sizes keep being too big, how to add captions but leave out watermarks? Instead of going fast I'd prefer to go slowly. I don't want to post four and five times a day, high definition. I'd rather reduce and compress, into poems and grainy images that move too slowly. I don't want to be sleek and fast, glitchy, awkward and suboptimal is more my thing.
Here's a poem with a title I stole from Percival Everett:
surface to core
Ideas have an earth plane life of their own–
government spying on our group chats can
never know my self self. I've changed
my profile name three times already.
What I was scared of already happened here,
I remember the feeling growing, a complete stranger.
If there's information to impart, I will receive
that transmission. As if just reading novels
and stories could inform me of everything
I need to know: large language models talking
shit because of all their input. I'm not impressed,
the vibes are off, surface to their core.
Some of my fiction is literally true.
Alternate memories and timelines full of caution:
many worlds, each a masterpiece.
Linear change is an extra tree in a landscape of
abandoned buildings: japanese pagoda
instead of another camo-barked sycamore.
Overlapping earths transmit directions
pulsing back to source. The kingdom
is within and among you, this very world.
Inter-dimensional, we are living bridges
between worlds. Kingdoms and maps
have been written, inks still wet.
Maybe I can break into time-solving
as a computer would "already lost
even as it wins" enemies of a powerful empire
their device screen glow and fragmentation
is closed loop. They can listen if they want,
only hearing frequencies they're attuned to.
Sam Levin