.
I can tell you were committed to your cause.
So much time invested in this creative endeavour.
Through the giant gates of the entrance to your town
I could see excitement in the air
Visitors from the past with effervescent minds
bubbling at the find
excited e-mails to a few friends and
countless e-friends
Just to let them know
of the cool web site, the "MUST check-out".
Then those cybernauts splashing each other, and others,
and others, and more,
with the intellect, the knowledge, of the existence,
of the find.
Then countless of those linking at their sites.
Then others finding these links, and also linking
in a valley filled with chains of all sizes.
A chain orgy never to come undone.
.
I can tell you were committed to your cause.
I liked what I saw.
I rushed in with clicker ablaze.
.
My first was wonderfully worded commentary,
within which an interesting door wouldn't open.
I stepped back.
.
Perhaps this Ginsburg door-link would open.
"The page cannot be found".
Perhaps the Sylvia Plath door ... please.
"The page cannot be displayed".
Perhaps Ann Sexton ...
"Account Expired"
"Sorry, the account has expired and those pages are no longer being served by this webserver. When students or staff leave the university, their accounts are removed. That means that their web pages will no longer be available."
.
NO!
.
I backtracked, and began to see.
Rolling tumbleweeds of links.
Beautiful storefronts, with windows and window signs.
Even curtains,
but nothing behind.
.
Abandoned ghost town.
Heaps of chains, rusty.
Empty barber's chair and broken mirrors.
Broken bottles, and stairs to nowhere,
crumbling bar stools in a dusty, musty, Saloon.
.
Once in a while
a small gated garden, with flowery words.
A mystical gazebo
where endless thoughts can permeate,
But looking up reveals this oasis
in a deserted ghost town.
.
Abandonment
of more than a place.
Of a state of mind before indoctrination,
of a state of being before enmasculation
of understanding and acceptance and tolerance and
of future expectations before the veil was removed,
of dreams, and endless landscapes of honey, rivers of plenty,
of caves with treasure chests filled with emerald incrested bracelets,
rubies, and crowns with precious stones of all colors,
and gold rings, and gold coins, and gold bars
and all these things for all the town folk
which danced in the streets, and cackled in the saloon,
and chatted by the fountains, and played by the plaza and ...
.
Then graduation came.
Paul Aponte