"Social Networking"

Poetry by Michael F. Nyiri

03/08/11 5:46 p.m. pdt

 

I live in the real world, and not on my space

Feel my heart beat, and look into my face

I walk on the ground, don't fly in cyberspace

I'm aware, on the earth, and exist in it's grace

 

This home rimmed by walls is my home, my small nook

I never wanted to be just another face in the book

A decade on the internet is a journey I took

My face is my roadmap, and I invite you to look

 

I'm not an avatar, a profile pic, a username

This heart is afire, and it's a tangible flame

My friends may be cyphers, and life may be a game

But the dirt under my fingernails is as real as my claim

 

We all dance or trundle along on our path

With hyper expressive joy or cold wrath

When this dirt from the earth covers, it's time for a bath

But we need to get out more, express, do the math

 

The 'net is a wonderful resource, I need ya

From the Huffington Post to Google and Wikipedia

A few clicks, a search term,will the mind really feed ya

It's better than hearsay, or gossip, or the media

 

But if the world wide web were to wander away

Disappear, get begone, and leave me here to stay

I would still have a wonderful world in which to play

As I lived in the past, would I live right here today

 

Because I live in the real world, and not on my space

Reach out and touch me, these lines on my face

I stand on the globe, spinning fast in my place

And nothing save death will cause my self to erase

 

And after I'm gone you can check out my website

www.allthingsmike.com for as long as it's upright

Contains dozens of pages, thousands of words that I write

Copy/paste my being, until it fades fast from sight

 

Error 404 life not found

 

 

"A Chlorophylled Life"

Poetry by Michael F. Nyiri

4/15/11 7:00am pdt

 

As the springtide arrives, so does the leaf:

this recent birth of life from an ancient tree

 

Small coiled tendil, fragile, translucent green

At the end of the branch, life where there was none before

A mottled still brown with a vibrant emerald presence attached.

 

Silver veins surge with a symphony of power

The small tender leaf begins to unfurl

As if in slow motion, this new life breathes

Strong winds, sudden rainfall, nothing stops her 

singular path toward fulfillment

 

From diaphanous burgeoning beginnings

edges now serrated in synchronous symbolism

the tiny branchlike veins reaching out across

the verdant countryside of her landscape,

the leaf uncoils to her bounteous exultant beauty

 

The spring may soon pass

but the leaf remains, in place, in command, in 

righteous indignation against all odds

flapping about wildly in the breeze

 

In time she is joined by similar shining new leaves 

sprouting

from the branches in wave after wave 

of malachite colored ecstasy

 

Where a few months before

only twigs stick out in space

Now hundreds of brothers and sisters

abound, rippling with the wind

surging in the sun

 

Throughout the summer

the leaf grows

thickening with this chlorophylled life

gaining sustenance

from the ancient tree

whose roots troll the ground 

and whose branches reach to the sky

providing the leaf with the

grace of the sunlight

 

As summer passes into the fall,

the once supple leaf begins to show cracks

in her surface

She breathes a little less fulsome

Her edges are a bit more serrated

her color becomes darker with age

 

For the tree, these passing of seasons

are hardly noticed

The tree remains in place, spring after spring 

summer after summer

heralding the beginning of the end when fall arrives

 

Slowly, seemingly without warning,

but in a story which plays out every year,

the soft green glow of the leaf fades to brown

Edges which once were sharp now crackle

inwards

The rich thick stem becomes a bit unsteady

and the flow of chlorophyll begins to

flow less steadily

from a river 

into a trickle of life

and such is the trick of this life

 

Winter is on the horizon

Cold winds sear into the now dark brown skin of the leaf

Her aged veins hardly contain her

Her withered stem cannot hold her for long

Rains which two seasons ago were 

life giving showers now mock her

attempting to sever the bond which holds her

to mother tree.

 

Eventually, weather's erratic behavior

and time's ever constant stamina

are no match for the fragile stem which 

attaches the leaf to her food supply

 

It takes only a small moment 

A sideways glance into cosmic certainty

A sliver of the Universal endurance

The breeze now a twisting zephyr

The rain now a pounding torrent

 

The elements cut the umbilical quickly

and the leaf begins it's one and only 

flight

down, 

free from the tree of life which sustained her

free from the bonds of existence.

 

The leaf sails unheeded to the ground

cracked and brittle

one of a thousand in a pile

compost for the heap

 

leaving existence in the wind