iOde; a little poem for my iPhone

sadly this is neither a nightingale nor a Grecian urn, but I wrote it an Ode anyway

Here’s a further reflection on my ambivalent relationship with all things Apple, an ambivalence I suspect many of my readers may share, wonder at what can be done, awarenes of loss as well as gain, an occasional reflection on whether a device that brings so many freedoms might also turn out to be a form of bondage. Anyway, here it is a light(ish) companion piece, I suppose to my earlier iPitaph on an iPad.

as always you can hear the poem via audioboo by clicking on the title or on the ‘play’ button. I must say that there was a strange frisson in reading into my iPhone, or perhaps to my iPhone a poem which was in fact addressed to it!

iOde

My private portal to a world between,

My placeless place of virtual exchange,

I see through you though you remain unseen

And make familiar what you once made strange.

 

You make a stranger means to make me ‘friend’

Whom I can ‘touch’ to ‘like’, to show I care.

You make a means to every unknown end

And make one little screen an everywhere.

 

I am familiar with a hundred faces,

All famished for their fifteen minutes fame,

I am half present in a hundred places

But never present in the place I am.

 

I pull you from my pocket when you call

I touch and swipe as I am bid to do,

You do my bidding too, you do it all,

What will you make of me, or I of you?