Poem 'Krishna on-line'
from Wendy
I am intrigued by pictures of the Blue Krishna and the mythology of this Hindu God, and of course many people in Fiji are named after gods.
I wrote this poem after someone on Fijilive forum starting writing about spirit and body. The pic is 'borrowed' from the internet where there are hundreds of pics of 'Blue Krishna'.
Krishna On-line
He is offering unframed empty spaces
so I post a message signed Milkmaid
saying 'Flesh and bones are real; we are physical.'
His reply is nonchalant, multi-syllabic,
seamed with abstractions like spirit…
consciousness… nirvana.
I make one concession about society -
that it's full of holes that suck
and write particularly about injustice.
'I'll go and milk my cows now,' I jest
but he is not laughing, just
pontificating about eternity and black holes.
I itch to reply again, to scratch his skin
Krishna, eventually silenced,
withdraws from the forum.
posted by Peceli and Wendy's Blog at 6:33 PM
5 Comments:
Perhaps the poem can be read in different ways:
I. the prejudice against a different view or voice
2. a discussion on the body v. spirit
3. the rude way people treat one another on an internet forum
Okay, I wrote it. I don't know what was in my mind at the time - just trying to be smart, perhaps!
It did win a prize in a writing competition and I don't know why!
W.
Communication on the internet poses some problems, one of which is the inability to hear the inflection of another's voice or see their face. We are left to guess from the words alone what the person means to convey. It is easy to misunderstand each other, to offend without meaning to.
I agree that internet communication is harder. People use smileys to supplement as "body language", but that is not adequate too. A real life face-to-face communication does feel more warm, close and sincere.
Yet, it is a wonder that by internet, we've got to know each other. Interesting innit?
I have met two internet friends face to face. Two women who seemed to be like-minded but one sounded a bit of an anarchist, the other very very left-wing. One came down to Geelong for the day while on holiday. The other we met in a country town and stayed with her mum for two days. Both women are smart and are lots of fun to talk with, but surprisingly they did not have spiky red hair with flames shooting from their mouths at all. Nice people. Their internet personas were quite deceptive.
W.
I can't count how many times I've seen people totally mistake someone else's intent in internet communication. Text just doesn't convey emotion well.
I also think the anonymity of the internet leads people to develop "cyber-masks". One's "in the flesh" self and one's online self are often quite different.
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