In The Metaverse (2022)

Popularized in the English language by Agha Shahid Ali, the ghazal is one of my favorite poetry forms. For my ARTT255 Digital Art class, I made a video in Adobe Premiere Pro to accompany a ghazal I’d written about the metaverse buzz. The voiceover is my own reading with sound effects from FreeSound.org. Inspired by the hypersaturated “corporate art style,” I illustrated each panel in Adobe Photoshop and edited handwritten scans of the poem in time with the recording.

In the Metaverse

World closed down for today? Try your luck in the metaverse.
Tear yourself from this big plague, life won’t suck in the metaverse.

It’s not just legless avatars, we have wizards and dragons.
You could be an oversized rubber duck in the metaverse.

Join us after the big game, rock out and you’ll see: young punks
drum against industry, grow up, chum with Zuck in the metaverse.

Promoted post: celeb artist sells out, shakes hands with crypto corp
and mints magnum opus into NFT for a buck in the metaverse.

Time for morning news. Megacorp scandals: here’s another one
about—oh, let me guess—about what, the fuckin’ metaverse?!

I’ll show them, I thought, that there’s more to this major than corporate tech—
ha! Joke’s on you, cyborgforty, you’re now stuck in the metaverse.