'Horny Old Man', or, the 'Unexpurgated Tinder Poems'

One myth about Han Shan, 寒山, the great Tang Dynasty poet, claims he wrote his famous "Cold Mountain Poems" on the bark of trees. Well true but not true. He wrote poems, and left them all over, and were it not for another monk named Lu Ch'iu-yin all would have been lost to time.

"I ordered Tao-ch'iao and the other monks . . . to hunt up the poems written on bamboo, wood, stones, and cliffs - and also to collect those written on the walls of people's houses. There were more than three hundred.  . . It was all brought together and made into a book."

       ['Preface to the Poems of Han-shan by Lu Ch'iu-yin' fr."Cold Mountain Poems", trans. Gary Snyder.]

The internet forest provides plenty of bark, wood and stones, alas as an impermanent medium. There aren't enough trees on a galaxy of Earths to record on paper what's written on our fairly young net. Yet almost all of it will be lost in time.

One assumes everything will last on a server forever.

Try this. The net is an abyss, a black hole, engineered to receive the 'flower of mankind', his 'swan song', everything from the content of his DNA to every last translatable scrap of poetry, every image, every email, every web page, every text. In short, the written and visual of everything human. One might think of it as reams of paper brought by a jailer to an inmate on death row.

Yet the net is more than what we record . .  increasingly it is what we do. The web is an activity unto itself. At the moment it serves as a massive collective memory, and as a cortex it is evolving. The web is beginning to think, and creates new realities, which in turn we may think of. Eventually it begins to think of these things itself.

Some believe once the net begins to create realities it will view humanity as a subservient species unnecessary for its own survival. It will craft robots that last longer than humans to do the work. And so, all will be lost. From our side of things it will appear as a pit, a burial ground for centuries of destructive behavior by a species out of control. Will we terraform planets and take all this with us? Might a silicon-based life form on earth take over from us. then propagate itself?

Where does this leave the living, breathing joke-making, eating, farting and love-making mortal Homo sapiens?

He throws creativity into the web. . .  and watches it float on an event horizon of certain destruction. Comprehend the stars, even they are mortal. Nothing lives forever. At some point the masses of data about human beings will simply cease to exist, and will be obscured by an unsearchable darkness, a compression created by so much information.

It will have other uses, as a kind of informational compost. So why not lob invectives into the vortex of certain destruction? Things beautiful and experiential, heartfelt confessions, that might amuse others as they fall with us into the void. Use the web to seduce and amuse!

Which brings me to the new app called Tinder which I now use as 'bark' for writing rhymes to anonymous women that I'll never meet.

You're reading the journal of a Boswellian who isn't ashamed to admit the current form of debauchery offered by our modern age. In the Victorian era we would have reviewed the opposite sex beneath gas street lamps, today we swipe right or left. Boswell wrote his famous journal between bouts chronicling the life of Samuel Johnson.

" . . . a girl in the Strand; went into a court with intention to enjoy her in armour. But she had none. I toyed with her. She wondered at my size . . . " Note: 'in armour' or 'with armor' refers to the use of a prophylactic sheath. [Boswell's London Journal, 1762-1763, Frederick A. Pottle ed., Second Edition, Yale University Press, 1950, p. 49]

Indeed the internet today provides one massive prophylactic. Direct experience has been replaced by internet experience. Even so the shock of an internet matchup throws the psyche into a stunned space. It bends time. Instant knowledge without learning, forethought without notice, memory without experience. We're hit by shrapnel; time warps, endorphins kick in. Something unpredictable has happened. Tinder provides this collision between souls on a mutually consensual basis.

Below the cleavage posts the phrase: "The silence is deafening. Someone has to break it."

Many of these gals spend hours creating dummy profiles and going through reams of man-data. Most likely they're just trying to make ends meet for an hourly rate, with a disk full of phony photos, fronting for flowers of the night who are sleeping off their exertions, limbs akimbo, in a limo.

It must take time to make that profile, attach photos, think up a name, and go through databases filled with man-fodder. No wonder they get mega-annoyed if you report them as 'scam' or 'inappropriate'. They have to start all over.

In that silence after the matchup, with that short fuse burning, I saw the greatest opportunity to write witty custom poetry on demand offered by the whole World Wide Web.

In order to be your Tinder lover,
I'll have to win you from under cover!

The objective's to write a just a few lines that win me a "Ha Ha!" A comic poet that wishes for more is delusional. Women love to hear their own name! I'll write poems that celebrate that most precious of sounds! Just a few minutes to charm these ladies before they dump the connection.

So it started:  Success would mean getting any response at all, ranging from "That's very funny Mark, hey come sext with me on talktoher.com" to a whole night of texting with an true innocent seeking true love, nervous about having a Tinder account.

These gals are charmed, and they chat. . . a few love the poems. I mean who is normal doesn't like a poem written with their name?

I wonder about Han Shan's life before he moved to live on Cold Mountain.

In my first thirty years of life
I roamed hundreds and thousands of miles.
Walked by rivers through deep green grass
Entered cities of boiling red dust.

         [Cold Mountain Poem #12, translation Gary Snyder]

I've not yet found my Cold Mountain. I've still to write an "Account from my Hut", or summarize the life of a writer-scribbler in the dusk hours of late life. Swiping right, swiping left, I'm covered by 'boiling red dust' of the city.

Here follow my unexpurgated Tinder Poems, written on internet 'bark', grouped by the Muses they were written for.

Ruth:

"Ruth oh Ruth it would so soothe me.
 If Ruth oh Ruth, you could unclothe me!"

"Ruth oh Ruth could I rudely grab you?
 Get uncouth in a booth and nudely have you?"

At this point Ruth responds, a cryptic "Ha ha LOL!" . . and I realize that she's four thousand eight hundred miles away. I ask her where she is and she tells me . . . Rio de Janeiro in Brazil!

Distance that allows the fantasy of a verbal romance! The technique works at breaking ice . . but it seems only to break ice with gals who are far away!

"Ruth, oh Ruth, are you still down in Rio?
 Would it be crude if I asked, "Are you real?"
 Let's go to a show and open the door to a booth,
 Only then will I know, on the floor, that you're Ruth!"

After milking the sound 'uuuth' for all it was worth, Ruth seemed to suffer fatigue. Then, after a long two-week spell of silence, and feeling miffed, hurt, snubbed and refused in spite of my gallant verbal seductions, I 'unmatched' her! Many of the poems were lost forever. Forgive me for my immature reaction Ruth, I still miss you. . . Ruth do you read this. . . I'm sorry, come back to me . . .  ;)

It wasn't long before I got the notification. "You have a new match: Rachayl.

Rachayl was trying to find supporters for her Instagram account. She wasn't particularly talkative, but she did tell me that she had a laugh or two looking west across the Mediterranean from a vacation resort with her parents on the Israeli coast. Israeli coast? See the pattern? 

"Rachayl Rachayl you seem so pale!
  Bake in the sun, while in Israel."

She's a college gal on vacation, doing the home country. 'Gotta run now!' - "Ta ta!"

"Rachayl, Rachayl you play on Tinder,
 Do you tease the boys who'd like to win ya?"

"Rachayl, Rachayl, remember that spelling,
 Rachayl of Tinder, my member is swelling!"

"Rachayl Rachayl if poems impress,
 I'll reach for your tail and hope you undress."

"Rachayl, Rachayl let me give you a facial!"

After this Rachayl responded with a big "Ha ha ha! . . . and a huge  pink smiley! 

Thank God for the smiley. Was that appropriate? Suppose she wasn't the 21 years she claimed? Encouraged I redoubled my efforts to amuse her with decency. The internet allows explicitness between strangers as a way of creating trust. We then spent an hour or so texting normally. Wailing wall, Temple on the Mount. . . all that.

My interest in Rachayl isn't religious or racial!

"Rachayl, Rachayl with the Atlantic between us,
 I see you romantic on the tip of my penis!"

A few more "Ha ha!'s" then Rachayl's vacation schedule must have picked up pace, Her trail went cold. 

"Rachayl Rachayl I'm under your spell!
 Rachayl Rachayl you've left me in hell."

"Rachayl Rachayl come tease out my cudgel,
 Rachayl Rachayl say cheese and then snuggle!"

"Rachayl, Rachayl where did you go?
 Miles away, love's impossible in snow!"

A comment from the moderator on the Rachayl thread. I suspected she felt she had crossed a line and wanted to destroy the damning evidence. I woke up the next morning and found myself un-matched. Terminated. Thrown away. Discarded. Used, abused, and forgotten. :(

"A letter from Jessey would be better than a blessing!"

Ha! I like that!

"Much better dear Jessey, to get wetter and messy!"

:0 !!! 

Then dead in the water the next day. Emboldened, I start over . . . trying a different, non rhyming approach. The images would have to be short, metaphoric . . . dreamy, imaginative, magical . . . 

"You seem as blue as the other side of the clouds."

"Do you weep rivers in the morning when it rains?"

"Do you smile crops into bloom?"

Unattached metaphors, headless horseman, wander the internet, seizing hearts, seeking a brain.

"Do you weep like a Goddess for her God?"

"Beauty, what do you weep for?"

"Do you love the sons you might not birth in this life?"

"Your smile rips a hole in time and sets me there to fight a war."

Back to my rhyming . . . the faster the better. Athena attaches a 'moment', Tinder-speak for a candid selfie. She's posing seductively by her bathroom mirror . . . 

Athena :

"Athena my Goddess don't be modest!"

Athena does not dally with mortals.

Susu:

"Let's get away from the crowds and wrap up in yur shrouds!"

Alexa:

"Alexa Alexa, do you get wet when I text ya?"

LOL!! Perv man I like this!

Bobette:

"Bobette, Bobette  my sweet little pet,

 Get yourself wet then come to my bed!"

Bobette scribbles: "How did you do that so fast?" 

"Bobette Bobette, we're not at the park yet!"

 Not much of a pitch, I'm too shook up to lob it,

 I never thought it a cinch, to hookup with Bobette!"

Remark to self . . the art of the rhyme is completely lost.

Bobette keeps her ears on. The connection's still open. Hope clings eternal.

Arlette 's another Muse with a name ending in -ette. Tinder has birthed an explosion of erotic identities, mostly looted from body parts of living mortals.

Arlette:

I send you these rhymes 'cuz I really can't stop it,

One night I'll spend time with the baby named Arlette!"

Arlette breaks silence to deliver an icy: "What is all this?" I carry on.

"You're a burst of shells in a faraway sky!"

Arlette's MIA . . . Easy does it. Slow down . . . Subtlety!


Siobhan:

"It's Siobhan, Siobhan I'd so like to lie on!"
 Siobhan pardon me but I've got a hard-on for thee!"

Siobhan replies . .. "I'd love to have a Mark on my record!"

"It's never quite dark enough to make love in a parking lot!"

Lo! and Behold, out of the mysterious internet dark, Siobhan replies with an address . . . I google it . . . alas it's the middle of a park.

Winter comes to Cold Mountain.