Many social media platforms missed Poncho during his vacation from the internet. Suddenly going from a tweet an hour to nothing is jarring to say the least. Writing a thesis paper isn’t the same as being the 2011 Poet Laureate. People expect to come to your presence on Facebook, on Twitter, on Tumblr, on Wordpress, or on Goodreads.
I remember where I was when I heard he was printing out his thesis. Everyone in the thread made specifically for online literary types grew excited. As we pictured his thesis, all hot and naked on the printer, unseemly images poured into our minds. We imagined his thesis as a being, a beautiful being with the gender we were attracted to, waiting for us. The thesis began discussing Frank Hinton’s poetry, it began discussing his poetry, and it began to subtly belittle critics of boykittens. Our eyes glazed over as his thesis did a little dance for us. Clearly that time spent practicing yoga paid off as it was infinitely flexible.
That time is over. We have him back to his rightful habitat not in some silly school learning things, but on here, on the internet, with us. A lot happened during his time away. First, in an attempt to garner him even more fame occurred in two deft swoops. We saw a Facebook fan page created in his honor, celebrating the 2011 Poet Laureate. Pictures were put up, celebrating him. Each time I saw an update I thought “Omar De Col, that macro fiend, is probably behind this page”. "Cutestboykitten" gave away the creator fairly quickly. Of course this pales in comparison to the second, infinitely more epic leap to internet stardom.
Google acknowledged Poncho’s status as the undisputed 2011 Poet Laureate. Wikipedia hadn’t gotten the memo. So we had to bring it to them. The first edit of his page proved to be effective. Eventually the article fell into some form of information anarchy. Reading the discussion page gave me the impression I was watching our gridlocked government decide how to screw people over by raising taxes or eliminating basic social services. After the article got deleted (though the supporters of Poncho’s Literary Activism were strong) the argument remains encased for all to remember in glossy internet amber. Perhaps one day we may extract that Wikipedia DNA to make a new page.
May 5th officially announced Poncho had returned as the undisputed champion of the 2011 Poet Laureate Google bomb. For on that day, he released new poetry. It had been a while but finally I got new Poncho. “4 Bee Poems” is what I found on ‘AllWriteThen’ a twee name for a poetry blog. The poems themselves were great.
Bees were the focus of each one. Poncho paid close attention to their smallness and sweetness rather than the stinger. In the first one, the bee transfers knowledge over to other bees. Realizing its own weakness it still manages to help others. The consecutive three go into even more affectionate territory, even a certain longing for affection of wanting love. For being a bee is not something we normally associate with kindness. More often we think about the pain they close instead of the care they have for flowers, for pollination. They are responsible for so much in agriculture. If you want to be nice to them, it would be real swell if you didn’t shriek and scream hysterically if they want to drink your Sunkist beverage. Let them. They have earned it.
Twitter is a big part of Poncho’s appeal. His twitter tweets at some unfathomably fast rate. Over 12,000 tweets is something to be proud of, I think. Especially considering how many of them are so weird, so interesting, devoid of links, just thoughts. A poem of his called “Show Your Horse The Internet. What have you done” on the knitcore blog displays his skill of re-configuring the tweets of horse_ebooks and Google searches into a poem. Meaningless phrases are woven together to form a total whole. It feels sad, playful, weird and, like much of Poncho’s work, somewhat funny.
Reading new stuff from Poncho is a real treat. He seems to be in touch with his surroundings and his perspective on house plants and bees makes me happy. Too often we ignore what’s around us for what is considered important or relevant to our daily lives. Poncho’s work reminds us to pay attention to the little details.