I hold the phone in my hand. My hand is freezing. I look at the phone. I look away from the phone. There’s a world there.
The phone says that’s a lie. The world is in the phone. I face the phone and tap. I flip from phone to face. You face the phone and walk away. Phone, get in the sea.
We’re doing this for everyone. You’re everyone else. Come on, come out.
Aerobicize with me. It isn’t for me, I promise. I promise I’m more than me.
It’s for the thing we’re not yet. It’s true I haven’t missed you. It’s also true I have.
-Sam Soloman
A response to #100hardtruths-#fakenews #94: "Always Look for the Real Thing," written for the online primer by Danielle Jackson. This poem was transformed into a video poem by students at New Utrecht High, in Brooklyn NY, about a year later.
Sifting transcendence on the shop-
floor, max out on red
carpet talk in the latest spirit
engagement, lacquer lips rainbow and
say “equality”. No really say
it.
Eyes-closed dance: a platform for silent
withdrawal, redeeming chaebol
payouts down in pledge-
making, cover(t), nothing
to hide – Moon smears refresh –
official sponsors of Seoul sunrise
bloated dangle need over
waiting. Distorted marches shape
bottle and crop
barriers, fermented.
-Angus Walker
A response to #100hardtruths-#fakenews #94: "Always Look for the Real Thing," written by Danielle Jackson, and more loosely or perhaps poetically to #100hardtruths #60 spot a #fakenews site in 10 stepswritten by Claire Wardle, the Research Director of First Draft.
Voyeurism is me you
eating popcorn eating skittles watching
The Latest Bad Thing unravel
You like to say
There has been another school shooting in America
& read me the details off your phone
17 confirmed dead, suspect arrested
little newsreader
You said you wanted to die in a big american swimming pool
I said I wanted to speak truthfully with you in a swimming pool cafe
I like to say
We have to get married now anyway
because we stayed up together
eating crisps eating leftover pasta watching
the 2016 election results
My future children, in their perfect television accents will ask me
Where were you when you heard? What world did you hear it in?
& I want that moment to be perfect
-Annie Dobson
A loose response to #100hardtruths-#fakenews #17: "Barak Obama says 'we won’t know what to protect.'"
I
Now search the deceased
in your omniscient search box;
grieve your lost likes.
II
Sad face the obituary.
Now you can miss the funeral.
Check for updates.
III
Timehop memory,
because ghosts can’t tell stories,
but do keep thumb prints.
IV
Do continue stalking
the bereavement of a group
known as a friends list.
V
You really are helping
by poking them into posting
painful pictures.
VI
Post how you knew them,
because ghosts can’t tell stories.
but you can send hearts.
VII
Click right and ‘see friendship.’
Share your brief interactions
to archive your grief.
VIII
Keep looking for grief.
Retweet deep quotes on death.
Follow the close family.
IX
Thank your tired thumbs,
because ghosts can’t tell stories.
But they are online.
-Gracie Thorne
A response to #100hardtruths-#fakenews #69: "Ghosts Can't Tell Stories," contributed by Quito Zeigler.
Four abreast on a three-spine path.
From the mud redirection comes
Expectations for conceptions
For this data webbed packet territory.
the unit of now is shared in itself,
And our digital gravity
Pulls us to the dislocation.
the path-link to tomorrow never ends.
Poster on a post: equally unread
If full or blank. though this blank is lit and
Blinking small verticality –
Soon filled, now, by boxes rather than blots.
Disseminated feigned impotence of
Influence; misdirection of meaning-
Place. the upturned table may be righted,
But take away a leg? then what? What then?
take away a leg
And they’ll want it to work as normal.
Legless will have always been the way.
So cord the whip
But don’t
Be me.
I could do nothing.
I could be nothing.
Not-I becoming virtual
-William Shier
A loose response to one of the project's 8 foundational #100hardtruths-#fakenews, #2: "the fake news is very real."
do not be distracted from the truth
that you make with your own body
Solidity is a useful illusion
It gets us through the day
solidity (gets us) resists us
tectonic assurance is fragile ground
the truth is the emptiness in the middle of the atom
the truth is the impressionability of matter, of us,
the truth is the space we fight to shape
-M. Astley
A response to #100hardtruths-#fakenews #34: "Place Matters/re-flecting the border," which itself refers to an art intervention of the same name by ERRE and Margarita Garcia Asperas, "Re/flecting the Border," 2017.
I choose
to believe
that you are not lying to me
when you claim to trace your tracks
See here
when I seemed to be there
but I was not
I was elsewhere
doing something Valid
You say
in the same state of seeming
And I do not see
any deference.
-Emily Holmes
A response to #100hardtruths-#fakenews #11: "Real Apologies for #Fakenews Aggravate Its Symptoms."
‘Essay’
: that which is in medias res
is always already all-known –
a narrator gives it to you now, i.e.:
“Concept” .
‘Blimey! That was brilliant!’ you say,
‘As palatable as an apple
on a summer’s day!’
-Grace Manson
A response to #100hardtruths-#fakenews #94: "Always Look for the Real Thing" written by Danielle Jackson. This poem also refers, loosely, to one of the founding #100hardtruths, #5
