See, I thought I’d found my Tiana

A nice little smoochy snog,

behind that rock shaped like a toad

your kiss turned me into a frog

 

Not way it’s meant to be I thought,

was like that fable in reverse

Your kiss made this already prince

into a toad, your kiss was curse

 

And though your kiss was rather nice

and pleased as hell we did it did it

Opened my mouth to my surprise

Out came, ‘Ribbit, ribbit, ribbit, ribbit’

 

I became a poor image

a little lowly shy green toad

We said goodbye and I leaped off

to find a pad, a new abode

 

Ribbit, ribbit, ribbit, ribbit

The German thinker Hito Steyerl

writes that the poor image is a copy in motion

Its quality is bad, its resolution substandard.

Ribbit, ribbit, ribbit, ribbit

As it accelerates, it deteriorates.

Ribbit, ribbit, ribbit, ribbit

It is a ghost of an image,

a preview, a thumbnail,

an errant idea, an itinerant image

distributed for free,

squeezed through slow digital connections,

Ribbit, ribbit, ribbit, ribbit

compressed, reproduced, ripped, remixed

Ribbit, ribbit, rip it, rip it

copied and pasted

The poor image is a rag or a rip;

Rippit, rippit, rippit, rippit

 a TIFF or a JPEG,

a lumpen proletarian

in the class society of appearances,

ranked and valued, according to its resolution

 Rippit, rippit, rippit, rippit

uploaded, downloaded,

Rippit, rippit, rippit, rippit

shared, reformatted and reedited

 

Your kiss may now be wearing off

Still wear green in my threads

How come my kiss did not change you

Why you not change insteads?

 

Why you not become pumpkin? 

For me that be okay

Cause every morning go Starbucks

My pumpkin spiced latte

 

Whilst you may have frog in your throat

And I’m still in my froggy role

Before I make my final croak,

I know you like toad in the hole.