A DIALOGUE.
"Do you have something we can use?
Something that can be converted
into an 'app'?"
"What is a snappy way to chat, what's an app?
Do I need to get a background check?
Do you really need to know
how miserable I used to be
in maths and chemistry and the laws
of physics?
How many boyfriends I've had? How many
I have slept with? No,
I don't have a technical degree,
and Foucault might have said an app
may not be enough to know
'Who Killed the World?' "
"The first Chevrolet ad in India
showed villagers colourfully dressed,
celebrating Holi. That was
'Marketing to India 101'.
Fooled you, didn't we?!"
"Fooled me?! You didn't!
(You did?)
Canvass the streets, QR a riot
of car engines that fill with
so much expensive smoke,
the weird sibling of the barcode
where you can place your
touch-sensitive phone
and travel to something that doesn't truly exist."
"But you believe! Don't you!
(You don't?!)
The scenery in advertisements, the suburban smile
on white suburban children's faces, made-up and
sweet, like Type-2 Diabetes, unhealthy and
seductive.
Aroint thee! Aren't you too abstract to be of use?"
"No! I make coffees all day, and at night
run my mocha brown fingers down the spines
of photocopied books of poems.
I have read all night, sometimes,
just to erase the coffee stains from my mind.
Do you have an app for that?
Do you?"
December 2015
