facebook ads know me better than you 

whales can go months without eating.
they travel without stopping across the open ocean.
i can go only a few hours before
i feel like i'm diminishing. 
the truth is, the facebook ads know me
better than i know myself. they know
when i'm hungry & they offer me
cereal in bulk. they offer me 
a subscription to the new yorker.
i think of cat-sitting for professors
& seeing magazines on their coffee tables.
i can't imagine being having all these things
but the ads know i can do it.
i can pull through. there are whales 
right now as i speak to you.
they are huge--bigger than my whole apartment.
when i am lonely i think of them
& consider how they cannot lie down
with each other. this is a mistake
because a whale is not human. 
a whale does not have facebook to know him
or a palm to hold his iphone.
a whale does not dream of billboards
or sidewalks. sometimes i try to guess
what animals think about. a sequecne 
of smells & movements. a whale crying
in its sleep. it wants a sip of soda. facebook says 
i want an online mental health counseling degree from NYU.
facebook says i should take courses 
in columbia's creative writing school. 
i do want them of course, but these are things
for another life when i am not as poor 
or as indecisive. do whales go around
writing poems in their heads?
do they rehearse what they're going to say to each other?
whales spend their whole lives 
thrumming with words. in the bottom of the ocean 
where their great bodies decay
so do their lyrics. the white ghost crabs 
eating fragments of song. whale language 
bubbling to the surface. my hands are freezing 
as i take a walk but insist on holding my phone.
maybe my phone is a kind of whale.
a vessel like i am a vessel & a whale is vessel.
i hope the whales are eating. i hope this isn't
their hungry months. no animal deserves that.
i will fly out to the middle of the ocean
& feed the whales if i can't become one.
facebook tells me URGENT is recruiting people
to teach private lessons. i imagine tutoring someone
on the importance of whales. they would nod 
& pay me generously.