#453: If I can go one-hundred days without . . .

Fifteen

If I can go one-hundred days without
Alcohol, do you think I might be able
To go a week without social media,
Or the internet for that same matter?
All that digital stuff has become
Like the cordyceps in The Last Of Us,
So inextricably intertwined in our lives
So as to make extrication seem nigh
Impossible. Maybe not even nigh. 
Again, like the zombie fungi, there is
No cure, treatment for mind, body, or soul
Save for the detox of all detoxes.
Even a day or two, I could start small,
An abstinence that rivals sex or alcohol. 

Here’s the second in a series of poems about the addiction to technology. There is much to love about the power of these tools, but there is equally much to worry our little heads, that is, if we are given to thinking. Or just being conscious of our digital habits. How soon after waking do we grab for our phone? How often do we pick it up throughout the day out of habit, without any sense of necessity? How often do we use our phones when we are not specifically calling, texting, or emailing another human being? The “phone” has long since ceased to be primarily a tool for communication. I think about this stuff a lot.  

Unless you’re wonky about poetry, the following might be a tedious read, FYI. 

Again, I have liberated myself from rhyme in the first three quatrains. I’m not even sure I can call them quatrains anymore. Yes, there are 12 lines before the concluding couplet, but these three groups of four are not inviolate—I mean—they sometimes overlap, like when the fourth line of a quatrain bleeds over into the first line of the next one. I’m not sure Shakespeare ever did that. But Shakespeare never wrote a sonnet in blank verse, either. I think we have given up, for the time being, on Shakespeare’s sonnet, except for that blessed concluding couplet.

If sonnets are a bitch, rhyming couplets are even bitchier. They’ve got to wrap the thing up. They’ve got to express finally the concluding thought, the thing you wanna say—at least in this model. They’ve got to maintain that iambic pentameter, and if you want them to have a kind of musical conclusion, a button, a finality, the ending rhyme is kind of important. What I found most difficult about this one is getting the syllable count right on that last line. Nigh impossible. That’s a 12 syllable line right there—and it feels like I would need to add even more syllables to make it say the thing that I’d like it to say. What I appear to be saying is that the abstinence itself resembles sex and alcohol, but what I want to say is that a detox from the internet rivals a detox from sex or alcohol—or drugs for that matter. I mean, an entire essay or series of poems would be needed to explore that idea, and the couplet’s job is to do it in two lines, twenty syllables, and a rhyme! Yes, couplets are a bitch. 

Let me experiment: 

An abstinence that rivals sex or alcohol. (12)

An abstinence that rivals that of sex or alcohol. (14)

A detox rivals that of sex and alcohol. (12)

It rivals abstinence from sex and alcohol. (12)

It’s easier to quit sex and alcohol. (11)

It’s easy to quit sex and alcohol. (10!)

OMG—I found one. But it’s not great. Again, it doesn’t have the same meaning. It’s almost a non-sequitur without that comparative aspect. So, in this case, the preceding 11 syllable line might be the winner. OMG again. How about this:

It’s easier to quit sex, alcohol. (10!)

There it is, baby. So, here’s the revision of the whole damn thing:

Fifteen

If I can go one-hundred days without
Alcohol, do you think I might be able
To go a week without social media,
Or the internet for that same matter?
All that digital stuff has become
Like the cordyceps in The Last Of Us,
So inextricably intertwined in our lives
So as to make extrication seem nigh
Impossible. Maybe not even nigh. 
Again, like the zombie fungi, there is
No cure, treatment for mind, body, or soul
Save for the detox of all detoxes.
Even a day or two, I could start small;
It’s easier to quit sex, alcohol.