Poetry from the 3:15 Experiment August 4, 2009: Alice in Twitterland & The Wine Twitter Court

August 4 2009
3:15am

Most knights these days
I dream about a twitter wine court
these are men and women
their avatar faces on
their twitter names on cards before them
they sit in a jurors box
like in Alice in Wonderland
weighing in snarking on wine
and life

I am most like Alice
mostly
standing on the ground before them
listening to their pronouncements
my eyebrows raised high about my teeth
my sweaty palms press into my pinafore

Their pronouncements have little to do
w/me yet I cagely
watch the conversation
wait for a chance to pipe in
hesitate to say something

then do

Mostly my words are ignored
but at least they’re uttered
in front of this kangaroo court
that lives in the dreamtime

I’ve been transcribing this year’s 3:15am Experiment poems and preparing a poetry manuscript collecting 100 of them to start submitting to contests and publishers at the end of the month. (The 3:15 Experiment is where poets from around the world participate in an experimental writing project by waking up at 3:15am local time and writing then publishing it as is unedited on the website…)

I don’t remember writing this 3:15 poem; in fact, that’s one reaosn why doing the 3:15 Experiment is so magical-you’re writing poems half awake and half asleep, in a hypnogogic/hypnopompic state, connected still to the unconscious.

While I didn’t remember writing it that night, once I reread it and started typing it, I remembered images from the dream which must have inspired me to write that poem. In the Juror box (which looked a lot like Tweetdeck!) there’s @ElJefeTwisted Oak, Thea @WineBratSF, @Sonadora, Hardy Wallace, @sonomawineguy Jim from Michel-Schlumberger, @RandallGrahm from Bonny Doon, @marcygordon and @winebard. @PMabray and @JoelVincent were there too. And more.

It’s not too surprising (the dream that is). I wrote this 3:15 Experiment poem just a week or two after the 2009 Wine Bloggers Conference. At that time, I was really starting to get into twitter, even though I’d been on it for about six months, and I was following a lot of wine people (I still am!) But I was starting to really follow some of the conversations, investing more time in it, and learning more about the people posting the tweets.

Since then, I’ve tripled my followers and those I follow as well as my tweets! More importantly, I’ve learned how important it is as a tool to find out what’s going on in the world and on the web that has value…and I’ve learned that I have contributions to make to the conversation, and that I am part of the conversation. Now, two months later, while I still sometimes feel like Alice in Twitterland, I no longer feel ignored.

Thanks to my tweeps for making me feel welcome in Twitterland!

For more poetry, ride the Monday Train! It leaves the station here every Monday and everyone is welcome to ride!

And I suspect this poem will make the cut into the book–what do you think? Do you like it too? Should a poem about Twitter be one of the 100?