Mark Zuckerberg’s Social Network
His classmates go by on the carousel,
they go by on the roller rink,
they go by on the ferris wheel.
They keep passing him by.
He gyrates before the funhouse mirrors,
looking for an improvement.
His laser light show is the hit of the senior prom.
He is voted “Most Likely to Succeed”.
His classmates gather around him.
But they bump the laser.
The laser aims at the ceiling’s mirrored disco ball.
The scorched students run for their lives.
He sleeps in a penthouse suite, which swings luxuriously
at the tip of a thousand-foot crane.
The company assembling the modular apartment building ran out of money.
The crane’s airplane warning light blinks
like the neon sign at a cheap motel.
Its tenants comfort his sleep.
He finally locates the home of the mermaids.
They bathe serenely in the floodlights of his deep ocean bathyscaphe.
Transfixed, he reaches out to touch them.
But the window is cold, flat, hard, like a magazine centerfold.
He wins.
His company takes over the grand pyramid-shaped skyscraper.
The competing businessmen are skewered
and installed on the big new foosball table.
His office is on the top floor. But the apex has room for him alone.
On his desk are picture frames, their factory-installed photos intact.
The motion detector has detected no motion in the last hour,
so it turns out the lights.
He sits in darkness.
He takes his seat at the annual banquet for industry leaders.
But he is the only remaining leader.
He sits alone among twenty opulent tables.
At each placesetting, a Chilean sea bass eyes him mournfully,
like the CEO of a ruined corporation.
They no longer move.
They no longer shake.
From his hot hair balloon, he throws gold to the people.
They gather around him, cheering.
But the more gold he throws, the lighter the balloon becomes,
and the higher he ascends.
He wanders his new mansion like a ghost.
As he enters each room, the lights go on, the music cues,
the breeze spins up, the video picture frames display his old family photos,
the video walls display scenic vistas.
His house is haunted by the Family of Tomorrow,
the family that never exists, that is always dead.
The video refrigerator door displays a photo of himself as a boy.
He slides the magnets around, drawing freakish faces.
He hears the jaunty bloopy song of the approaching ice cream truck.
He runs out of the house to catch it, just like when he was a boy.
But his driveway is too long.
As the truck drives away, the Doppler effect lowers the song into a sad key.
He is the first space tourist to make a spacewalk.
But he can’t figure out how to make the jetpack function.
The spacecraft has orbited out of view.
The Earth floats before him.
He reaches out and wraps it in his arms.