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Social Networking (poem)

By Dayl Wise

Ho Chi Minh requested my friendship on Facebook today.
In an instant message he thanked me for my friendship
and said he liked my poetry, but I think he was just being nice.
He has twelve friends      most of them dead.

Ho reconnected with his first wife Zeng, a Chinese woman,
through Facebook who just retired after a long career as a midwife.
He told me he still loved and was sorry he left her, but she is happily married.
She unfriended him. Uncle Ho is very depressed      his heart broken.

Ho sent out a Facebook event poetry announcement to all his friends,
to mark the 1972 Christmas bombing of Hanoi by Richard Nixon
and the takeover of the Statue of Liberty by Vietnam Vet's Against the War.
He will be one of the features      along with a surprise dead beat poet.

Ho now lives in Brooklyn and travels by bike to Battery Park, on most days,
selling red tee shirts with his likeness in a yellow star made in Viet Nam.
Other novelty items include Richard Nixon & Bob Hope bobblehead dolls.
No one recognizes Ho as he sits there smiling      drinking sticky rice wine.

—Dayl Wise