Ode to Browsing the Web

Two spiky-haired Russian cats hit kick flips

on a vert ramp. The camera pans to another

pocket of  the room where six kids rocking holey

T-shirts etch aerosol lines on warehouse walls

in words I cannot comprehend. All of this

happening in a time no older than your last

heartbeat. I’ve been told the internet is

an unholy place — an endless intangible

stumbling ground of false deities

dogma and loneliness, sad as a pile of shit

in a world without flies. My loneliness exists

in every afterthought. Yesterday, I watched

a neighbor braid intricate waves of cornrows

into her son’s tiny head and could have lived

in her focus-wrinkled brow for a living. Today

I think I practice the religion of  blinking too much.

Today, I know no neighbor’s name and won’t

know if  I like it or not. O holy streaming screen

of counterculture punks, linger my lit mind

on landing strips — through fog, rain, hail — 

without care for time or density. O world

wide web, o viral video, o god of excrement

thought. Befriend me. Be fucking infectious.

Move my eyes from one sight to the next.