after Petrarch 

 
So long I have been dwelling in a place  
of too much     potential,     my thoughts,  
scattered, my footsteps circling a grandiose  
mudroom,     anxious to find something  
worshipful. It is nice to have fingers  
and defenses,     a few words I can swallow 
in neat, little capsules when enemy forces  
surround the abandoned tannery.     It’s time, 
you say, for my hiding,     so I pop open the laptop 
and dim the sky’s blue for my eyes’ sake. 
The problem is you are always changing. 
I cannot properly obsess.     One second  
you’re peddling Dr. Squatch bodywash  
as Sydney Sweeney the next chopping  
cilantro seductively for 64k samba-loving 
followers.     Remember when muses were  
decent enough to sear a singular image  
in the mind? Standing in the center     
of the coliseum, wearing nothing but Adidas  
flip flops,     I listen for chariots and clashing 
steel and the turning of ambivalent  
thumbs, but hear only the humdrum buzz  
of hive minds insisting I upload you to 
a flash drive.     There is the thing and the thought 
of the thing.     There are bodies that piece  
themselves together from shredded blazons  
then throw on a sexy nurse costume 
and go trick or treating.     Like cupid,      the ads know 
their target and the algorithm is quiver happy: 
Bullseye!     Pied pipers,     content moderators 
of the 4chan Roman forum,     I have not come here 
to pin my sweet accents on a patsy.  
The people need to know how I feel under 
all this flambéd desire. If I’m absent from  
posterity,     assume I’ve been shadow-banned.