I spend my days and night times too
framing up a gallery the pounding of nails
on the keyboard rings across my desk.
To form up themes, menus and widgets
as I construct my shop walls of ones and zeros
on which to hang my paintings of pixelated light.
I’ll invite customers into my virtual space
with tweets, posts and pins
not by birds on the clothesline to air dirty laundry,
but with hashtags and GIFs, maybe a even a vlog.
Hoping to go viral while remaining
appropriately socially distanced with masks optional
for patrons at their computers and I at mine.
I hope the trolls stay under their bridges
leaving my little space on the world wide web in peace.
I’ve no need of their nasty traps or stinging rants
that could scorch my little shop to cinders before it goes live.
Yet with Google those elusive art buyers around the world can goggle,
write reviews or rants or maybe just buy
a tiny oil painting in an antique crackle gold frame
made with daubs of cadmium, ochre, cobalt and titanium
mixed with the ancient mediums of linseed oil and boiled turpentine
applied with steady dancing hands to the canvas
painted to honor the long love affair between the land and the light.
Meanwhile the mundane reality is
I’m up all night “chatting” to technical support
in India or Bulgaria like an overworked teacher the technician
corrects the grammar of my codes in broken English.
Collected forms and receipts drift into piles of paper on my desk
40 open windows clutter my desktop screen
fur flies under my slippered feet
as dogs who want walking
vie for my attention mostly muted
hidden in the zoom room
behind a background of beaches or bakeries
as I talk to unshaven techs and executives.
A solitary woof or growl breaks
through the ether to make a a person wonder
if werewolves are mere fantasy.
In a virtual world filled with an ancient art of illusion
who is to say what beauty or beast is real?
And who’s shop is built of straw or bricks.