Ode to Twitter

by Erik Hare
(Saint Paul, MN, USofA)

With the bright summer dawn when I roll up and yawn,
The first thing I do is to switch the news on.
Not the teevee with banter among heads full of chatter
I’d rather log in and see what my friends figure matters.
With coffee and twitter the morning’s complete
With a tweet, retweet, and repeat.

The lines are real short, we must be witty and sporty
As it all has to fit in just one hundred forty.
There’s a way to get more but it’s really a chore
To decode what it means when they ROTF.
But at least you can picture them out of their seat
While they tweet, retweet, and repeat.

Through imperfect spelling there’s a story we’re telling,
Interrupted by breaks of affiliate selling.
Like a brain dump of sorts full of heroes and sports
The unfiltered feed of a thousand reports.
It’s the latest compile of the word on the street
That we tweet, reweet, and repeat.

The storyline goes as it ebbs and it flows
Past the praising and damning of new teevee shows
And their stars, unmistaken, (‘cept for those that are fakin’)
‘Cuz on twitter we’re all merely one degree Bacon.
With plenty of Bieber, like a mod Tiger Beat
You can tweet, retweet, and repeat.

There’s political news if that’s what you choose
If you don’t mind it coming from one-sided views.
In a stream without pause ya can join Tea-COT’s cause, yeah,
But it’s mostly “Obamacare” written ad nausea
Still, it’s fun you can join in or compete
With a tweet, retweet, and repeat.

It gets hard just to scan it from all over the planet
(Though Iran works really hard just to ban it.)
From Rome and Mumbai, New York and Dubai
And places you can’t even map if you try.
You can never be sure of whom you might meet
From a tweet, retweet, and repeat.

With the fun we’re all making there’s still no mistaking
It’s how we define it, not “news” that we’re breaking.
Though the mavens won’t shout it there never a doubt it
Cannot quite replace the traditional outlets.
But for gossip and good times there’s nothing to beat
Daily tweet, retweet, and repeat.