Twitter Tanka

So.... It's about time I popped up some more juicy poems. This one I've put up at the request of a delightful teacher from Scotland who heard me poetry busking as part of the Ilkley Literature Festival this Saturday. Here goes....

Twitter Tanka

The modern counterpart
to outmoded ancestors
travelling the globe twenty years ago.
Who clutched bulky lenses,
and brightly greeted sulky Brit defences,
with flashbulb grins,
smooth, rounded chins,
on long legs thin.

This decade's bunch are a savvier breed,
moonlighting as tourists,
surfacing at night
to sate their social networking needs.

Click, load, click, refresh;
chasing you, as arrows touch.
Night's blue. Two minds meet.

They send each other tanka over twitter:
two loving lines repeated,
plus two more,
their retweeted characters
cursorily read by scores of followers,
their secret language shared,
and spread
from island to island of late night laptop lovers,
networks of glowing firefly faces
peering as screens to understand
their spinning thread
of conversation.

Click, load, click, refresh.
Chasing you, as arrows touch.
Night's blue. Two minds meet.