The Quantified Self

Wear your poems on your sleeve,

each one a fitbit for the soul:

                                                   how many steps among trees and hills,

                                                   among birds, sunsets, seas, the elements

today?

Measure your being in metaphors,

observe each agitation of the atoms within:

                                                   how many heartbeats in kisses,

                                                   in fucking, in tenderness, in love

today?

Log your life for each fleeting

accidental condensation of experience:

                                                    how many steps climbed on the page,

                                                    on the screen, in the journal, in desire

today?

Count the syllables of self-surveillance

as you watch yourself think, feel, act:

                                                     how many calories burned in reading, in writing,

                                                     in this arithmetic of selfie-absorption

today?

Compute the very algorithms of sleep,

that one theatre closed to attention:

                                                     how many dreams on the digital clock,

                                                     how many deposits in the data bank

tonight?

But the self lies not long in the bed made for it,

makes off as soon as the senses sound an alarm:

                                                     becomes an actor without an audience,

                                                     thrives only in forgetting its own name.

What if the unexamined life is worth living after all?