Social Grief (A False Elegy)

I've spent too long in Twitter's despondent company.

'Social Grief' is a poetic false elegy which dragged itself onto the page after I spent far too long in the despondent company of Twitter.

Yes, I do realise I’m only making things worse.

© J. Reid

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Social Grief

Some write to remember,
some write to forget.
Some write for others – they say.
Exhuming mildewed memories
from rotten stoneboard beds,
their spun reality ignores the dead.

Long-suffering self-assumption
means our writer has justly bled.
Only their angst-filled head
can be trauma’s willing host.
It’s reason enough to plead
they’ve suffered more than most.

Revealing their feelings to
a world which should – but doesn’t – care,
their fleeting audience is unheeding,
of evocations blandly wrought.
A glimpse enough to affirm
their false tuppences of thought.

Our writer persists, entrancing followers
with pleaded platitudes of suffering.
A virtuous, acronymous stream,
to wring heartfelt feelings from others.
Imploring strangers and friends,
to be their sisters and brothers.

Lingering as unwanted guests,
their word-worms remould our brains’ clay.
Heart-soaked likings claimed,
our writer’s fraught words remain.
Daubed onto our creaking memories’ wattle,
staining us with their false, immodest pain.