Would you be kind enough to give me your true opinion of my poem "The Cold"?
“The Cold”
Cold as a sunny winter’s day
Cold as a computer’s friendly user screen
* * * *
I am like my grandmother
One minute laughing, the next minute crying
My grandmother speaking in Yiddish to my mother,
turned to me for one moment to say “get married”
I didn’t marry
* * * *
The computer and the cellphones are the new love and sex objects
When the cell phone rings, I rush to answer,
in ecstasy, the song of an orgasm
I gaze onto the computer screen with a lover’s intensity,
a lover’s thrill
Who sent me an email
Who answered my question on Yahoo Answers
And yet there is a great detachment
as if the email was written by itself
as if the people who answered questions on Yahoo Answers really are avatars
Another online friend disappeared today
I don’t know why and I don’t care to investigate
A vague detachment has set in
as if that communication was not with a real person
as if that person existed just to entertain me like a computer game
As Bruce Springsteen sings 57 channels and nothin’ on
So we in the computer age are free
to have instant communication with almost anyone in the world
Then why I am so lonely and forlorn at home, hugging my cat
Perhaps the cold computer is the same friend as the TV was
Remembering how it keeps you company
Never succumbing to loneliness when high tech help is always here
The winter scares me
The cold becoming colder
The people rushing to get out of the cold
The darkness with the bare trees
and the traffic lights flashing without warmth
The winter fear is reminding me that life is so cold
as cold as online friendship
even when it suddenly turns passionate
as I type in words that mean so much to me
proving to the other how clever and compassionate I am
and proving to myself once again that I am a talented writer
But then the words are cold too
Placed on a cold screen to an unknown quantity
Amazingly, this unknown quantity continues to respond
to my quick wit masquerade
The cold winter killing the green life
and the lifeless computer connecting me to other lives
These frozen lives live on, unnatural to this word intimacy,
and without my ever feeling their breath on my face