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| Image: Selfie by Kresten Forsman |
Reinvention, America’s
Most alluring cosmetic, now
Flourishes on social media.
Depressed or bored with how
You look, just change the foto
On Facebook and take a bow
With the newly enhanced you to
Wow your followers and friends;
Just watch the “likes” pile up, the “So
Cutes!” and “Awesomes!” making amends
For your blues and boosting self-esteem
Until some new rejection sends
You to take an iPhone selfie that you deem
A darling reflection of your best self-image,
Just the photograph that will redeem
You in the eyes of others, make you the rage
Of the moment on Instagram, whatever.
Yes, the chance to reinvent our visage
Proves again the genius of the founders
Of “Face”book – long may its format last
While we forever change our pictures
To meet the faces that we delete so fast
Online, blowing off each other’s horns,
That we have lost our sense of the past.
Try as we might, we cannot be reborn
Like our faces, however cosmeticized,
And inevitably age turns its scorn
On all of us. When you’ve compromised
Your pilgrim face and bookmarked your still life,
Your soul cannot try on another size.
George Held, a regular contributor to The New Verse News, has a new book out soon from Poets Wear Prada, Culling: New & Selected Nature Poems.