Poem: "Ghost Towns and Tumbleweeds"

[ysabetwordsmith]

This is the freebie for the August 6, 2013 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by a prompt from LJ user je_reviens.


"Ghost Towns and Tumbleweeds"

First it was DARPAnet,
the hot new packet-switching network,
expanding slowly from business to pleasure,
and then other networks emerged,
PLATO expounding in cyberspace,
and the migration began.

Usenet thrived for a time,
then fell prey to spammers;
people moved to Yahoo groups and beyond.

Social networks emerged,
Friendster and MySpace,
their echoing ranges
now nothing but
ghost towns and tumbleweeds.

Blog networks appeared,
LiveJournal and Dreamwidth,
Blogger and Xanga,
readers roving amongst them in droves.

Then came microblogging,
Facebook and Twitter,
Tumblr with its focus on photos,
life reduced to snippets and glimpses.

We are online nomads,
never settling for long in one locale,
always ready to pull up stakes
and head for the horizon

whenever the Next Great Thing beckons to us.