The poem originally appeared on subsubpoetics and was written by replacing every 'a' with a 4, every 'e' with a 3, every 'i' with a 1, every 'o' with a 0, every 'g' with a 9, and some other textual substitutions as well. This poem is perhaps more sincere than the other content, perhaps more mundane and commonplace, but all such things should have a home. The empty feeling from working too much, being too deeply immersed in the mercantile world, and the effect of such feelings of emptiness on one particular personal relationship, my most important relationship. A poem about web pages as miscellaneous and vapid as country stations in a violent cowboy world soldiered by people in briefcases. Perhaps because all of that time on the internet we are sitting in front of a lifeless monitor.
Human contact is so hard to find, and just a little more difficult on the internet.
It's as if making a bigger noise on the internet will finally bring the touch, but at that point you're already sucked in. And you are more easily commodified at that point. I guess I'm pretty much an vitalist, by way of Wilhelm Reich or Bergson, so my concerns with the technology of text, of internet, or ideas without flesh, distant media like big brothers, are all in conflict with the great deal of fondness I have for both writing and the internet. And I'm curious here about the rise and fall of the sentence, how syntax is like the chord structure of a song. Hence the unresolved sentence to introduce, and its repetition as an opportunity for resolution.