Transcendentalists on TikTok
Thoreau tried to post a preliminary draft
Of On the Duty of Civil Disobedience
But even his own mother
Chose an exercise video instead.
The words “duty” and “disobedience”
Skewed the algorithm against him.
Meanwhile, a fifteen-second clip
Of Emerson eating his breakfast porridge
Was viewed eleven million times.
The platform went wild
When he dropped his spoon
And was heard to mutter
Something like the word “drat.”
Later, when visiting Henry at Concord jail
And pausing to take a selfie for Instagram
(Eight million likes!)
Emerson asked his friend,
“What are you doing in there?”
Henry replied,
“What are you doing out there, Waldo?”
“I’ll tell you what I’m doing out here.
I’m becoming a major influencer with
Lucrative sponsorship deals in the works.
Transcendentalism is going to be big.
Soon the kids will be all over it
Though I may have to change the name
To something with less syllables.”
“’Fewer,’ Waldo,” said Henry.
“You mean ‘fewer.’”
“Whatever. You see, you’re one of those
Hobgoblins of the Mind for whom
A Foolish Consistency is everything,
And it’s killing your brand.
Kids don’t want all those big words—
They want funny vids.”
When the Waldencam video
Of Henry eating the woodchuck
Received fifteen million views
He knew his friend was right.
—Andy Senior, (Nov. 4, 2022)
Ignore Remus
I was disowned by wolves.
If to err is human and forgo lupine
My abandonment
Was a foregone conclusion.
There had been two of us
As while my brother
Suckled to robust health
On the teat of a she-wolf
I was cut adrift and exposed
But not long enough for my liking.
I was taken in on
The brink of sweet oblivion
By a woman who raised Cocker Spaniels.
The sight of a newspaper
Pains me still.
I could not learn any of their tricks
But only the ones I made up.
“Roll over?”
No, I was doing rude anagrams.
I flunked out of Obedience School—
Which is to say, school.
I was a bad wolf and a worse dog
But a barely passable human.
There is no pack or tribe
That will have me
And the feeling is entirely mutual.
Society disdains me
For not even pretending
To want to belong to it
But is quietly relieved I do not.
Shunning others
Is a grievous moral wrong
And I seek to atone for it.
The terrible penance I pay
For my solitary vanity
Is to publish a newspaper.
If there is, at last, no redemption
There is at least recycling.
—Andy Senior (July 27, 2023)
