Our Lives on Wikipedia |
by Stuart Kurtz

Everyone knows
The sum of all knowledge can be found on Wikipedia
All our achievements, joys, fears, and personhood
Everyone knows
If they have computer access that is

Search me
I’m there
After venturing into web space
Maybe you’re there too
Space is infinite – at least while the browser’s up

We’re all there in the larger sense
Mankind brought to you by The World (Same as Wiki)

Find our Early Years
Floundering in the mud before data collection
Our careers:
At your finger tips – connected to the keyboards as most of us are
Our ethics and honors: a line for each
Our memorials: our epitaphs are also URLs
And legacies: no need to worry about forgotten books
We remain as long as cyberspace

It’s good to know the summation of life lies between
The world puzzle and the Wiktionary
That love once lost now lives on – paginated
And whispered sweet nothings now in Suomi and Hrvatski

The soul
What’s the search term for that?
Can’t be so hard

There’s a comfort in our history and deeds and ideas
All contained in a big online database
No one understood Proust once
But now we remember his past on a timeline

Just go to Wikipedia
Where factoids on art, truth, beauty, and I’m sure essence can be had
Where all our spirit may reside

The Library of Alexandria once held the sum of ancient knowledge
And it burned to the ground
No danger of that in Web space
Our collective consciousness is collected there

And venturing forth off the WAN into the forest primeval
Some wireless not even reaching there
We may find some new ambiguous term
Only known between dreams and inspiration

We can never be sure ourselves
So better ask Wiki





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Stuart Kurtz is a published free-lance writer of arts reviews, travel, interviews, and social commentary whose first appearance in drama, "Floating on Idea Clouds," will be in Verse Wisconsin in Fall, 2012 and in poetry in Ascent Aspirations in October, 2012. He was the only American reporter to cover Toronto's ScotiaBank Nuit Blanche in 2009. For hire at writerstuartk@gmail.com Blog: www.stuartkurtz.blogspot.com