Suggestion Bar

I open the lid of my Macbook Pro

I watch pop music videos on YouTube

By Kanye West and Miley Cyrus

I don't have to search

Because the suggestions bar guides me

The suggestions bar knows me better than ever before

And it's almost like love

Like the feeling of intense belonging

When a barmaid addresses you by name

And you know in some way you have transcended

I move passively from song to song

Piloted by the light of the suggestions bar

Passing on the way dreadlocks of bright coloured hair

Lazy socio-political statements

And face tattoos

Occasionally interrupted by Aubrey Plaza clickbait

And ASMR videos

On my iPhone I play games by Ketchapp and Voodoo

I scroll through Instagram

Another close algorithmic friend of mine

Making sure I see the posts of highest importance first

I move through the tanned, bikinied bodies of girls I knew from secondary school

Who exist now to me only as ornaments

Mounted on the inner wall of my skull as I scroll

And who disappear the moment I lock my iPhone

I pass through Southeast Asia

Through enlightened gap-years

Each interchangeable with the last

American sneakers on Vietnam soil

Mounted on mopeds

All captured on bum bag disposable cameras

Boomtown festival survivors

Gurning and glittered

In Sector 9 at 8 am

My first urinary tract infection

Every straight guy at Pride

And every white girl at Notting Hill carnival

Who are all adorned in Christian Dior

And nothing was holy