FRIEND ME

I have finally set up my own facebook account. I know, I know, so many thought I was a face book hater. I am not, well not anymore. Earlier in the week I witnessed a little boy doing something very sweet yet made me question how we interact. His endearing act inspired me to write Friend Me.I have battled the web vs. the physical contact of friends and it was one of the reasons I shied away from the social network. Now, I see the change in the world and how we have learned to communicate in new ways. Since we are friends, cause you are reading my blog presently and maybe read something I wrote on facebook, feel free to share my poetry and Friend Me!

FRIEND ME

It‘s a stomach virus
invading my house,
so I drive right to
Rite Aid to buy

a water bottle and Tums
for the upset stomach of
my nine year old daughter.

In line, in front of me, is a
little boy pulling at his
mother; shunned, he
looks at life differently,
patiently waiting for his toy.

His attention is attracted by
the magazine rack and
finally he settles on a face,
a mug shot, I might say,
of a man with
blue topaz eyes who is
staring eye level with him.
In a quiet mantra,
I hear the boy whisper--

“Your face,
a nice face you have.
I give you a kiss,
on nice lips, you have.” And
he kisses the face on the paper,
a picture looking oddly like a
computer screen.
“You have nice lips.”
The little boy continued to say,
to the freckled man
on the cover of Time magazine.

This face, on display, on
the cover of a magazine.
His face, a possible facebook picture.
THE face--
that taught the
world to be connected,
was awarded
the man of the year
at the swollen age of 26.

I can’t stop staring at the boy.
Does he think he is the real McCoy ?
I think his mom is facebooking; she fiddles
with her smart phone,
the cashier behind the counter
is counting on a lull… so he can do it too.

“It’s a nice face.” I hear
the 5-year old boy
say. “You have a nice face.”
And he kissed the face
once more. He stares at
the glossy picture, perched
like the head of a mannequin
on the silver metal magazine rack.

It’s Mark Zuckerberg, who
created an open information flow,
revolutionized and minimized, I realize.

The miniature gold-framed glasses,
balanced on a four-foot frame
reflects the face of
the youngest billionaire onto this boy--
not blocked by an internet firewall.

It’s cool to be a social net worker,
to jump the fence as a philanthropist and
a web protégée with almost a Harvard degree all
in the year of 2010, also studying Mandarin Chinese.
Can we guess why? I figure it is

nothing the little boy shouldn’t understand as
he stood there kissing a man with a nice face.
He is not misunderstood, he is free and knows--
we all want to be accepted,
to be friended, not unfriended, to be connected,
to be virtually touched, even if it is by a
face on the web or the cover of a magazine.