Doggerel & Pastiches

In Memory of Hotmail

It disappeared in the growing springtime:
The trees were budding, the students back from Easter,
And comments plugged all-new baseball jerseys;
The signal sank in the noise of the closing day.
What traffic stats we have agree
The day of its death was a spam-filled day

Far from its run-down
The bloggers posted on their WordPress pages,
The maker Tumblrs were untempted by the genuine crafts;
By mindful tweets
The death of the service was kept from the emails.

But for it it was its last afternoon as itself,
An afternoon of IPs and routers;
The address-blocks of its data were emptied,
The storage infrastructure was backed up,
Load was dropped from the balancers,
The flow of its data failed; it became its archives.

Now it is scattered among a hundred redirects
And wholly given over to unfamiliar aliases,
To find its content in another kind of index
And be cited with a foreign quote syntax.
The mails of a dead system
Are modified in the files of the living.

But in the importance and noise of to-morrow
When the flamers are trolling like toddlers in the threads of the blogs,
And the poor have the bad news to which they are fairly accustomed,
And each in his epistemic closure is almost convinced of his freedom,
A few thousand will think of this day
As one thinks of a day when one did something worth writing a blog post on.

What traffic stats we have agree
The day of its death was a spam-filled day

Originally posted on Making Light

Doggerel & Pastiches

Far over the cracking pavement grass’d

Far over the cracking pavement grass’d
To supermarket car park glass’d
I must away ere it’s midday
To seek some plums to break my fast.

The other day I bought some fruit
Not yet quite ripe, but soon to suit
My morning taste. And, bag-encased,
Those plums were mine beyond dispute.

I bought red apples to give to Bill
So he’d have fruit to eat his fill.
He loves what’s sweet, and dares to eat
The food I leave in the fridge to chill.

We’ve had this argument before
Since he will oft my signs ignore.
I write “Keep out, you dirty lout.”
And “Eat this food and you’ll get what for!”

And so I hid those plums from him
Behind the milk, in a corner dim,
I’d planned and schemed, and so I dreamed
Of cold sweet plums on the way to gym.

Far over the cracking pavement grass’d
To supermarket car park glass’d
I must away ere it’s midday
To seek some plums to break my fast.

The sun was hidden by the gloom
And woke me not. In our bedroom
I slept past eight, while Bill, up late,
Had got the munchies, I presume.

The wooden floor in the kitchen squeaked
The icebox door with menace creaked
And in their sack, open to attack,
Sat plums with condensation streaked.

The bag it rustled, then it tore
That pig ate one, and wanted more.
The plums were gone, that I’d counted on:
My breakfast plans did my Bill ignore.

And on arising, what did I see
But the note that Bill left me
In timeless verse (which makes it worse):
A self-indulgent fauxpology.

Far over the cracking pavement grass’d
To supermarket car park glass’d
I must away ere it’s midday
To seek some plums to break my fast.

Originally posted on Making Light

Doggerel & Pastiches

Lurching through eternity

O fragrant flesh, beside my tomb
You wander freely through the gloom
And think you’re safe among the dead
With those sweet brains still in your head.

You turn your back, and I arise
And look on you with rotten eyes
But then you hear my hungry moans
And see the flesh hang from my bones.

You scream in panic, run away
While all around the graveyard sway
The revenants, in shambling race,
Converging on your hiding place.

And when we find you crouching there
We seize your ankles, wrists and hair.
We bite your flesh, we chew your veins
And then at last, we eat your brains.

And when the feasting time is done
You rise again, and we are one:
The eaten eat, the victims stalk
We shamble where we once did walk.

Remember, man, as you pass by:
As you are, once was I;
As I am, you’re to be,
Lurching through eternity.

To the tune of Look on and Cry.

Originally posted on Making Light

Doggerel & Pastiches

Going through the Twilight

(To the tune of “Going through the motions” from the musical Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode)

(Edward)
Every single day, I do the same thing:
Get up in the morning, go to school.
Still I always feel I’m only gaming,
Nothing here is right, nothing here is cool.
I am such an ass when I’m in class
Just hoping I can pass
‘Cause I’m just going through the motions
Living in a dream
No one knows I’m not the jerk I seem.

I was always cold and kind of distant
Now these days I’m holding back
Never growing old, the things I’ve missed and
Now I find I lack.

(Buffy)
You really need a smack.

(Edward)
At least I’m wearing black.

(Buffy)
You seem pretty skilled, and I’m just thrilled
To hear you haven’t killed
But you’ve been going through the motions
Living out a lie.
How much longer are you going to try?

(Edward)
Maybe one day I’ll be vicious
Now I’ve met someone delicious.

(Buffy)
See, I knew you’d get ambitious.

(Edward)
I don’t want to be
Going through the motions
How much can I take?
Bella’s special scent
Has me so discontent…

(Buffy)
See, this is what I meant. Eat stake.

Originally posted on Making Light

Doggerel & Pastiches

Quaeris, quot mihi unadaugeones

Quaeris, quot mihi unadaugeones
Tuae, Lesbia, sint satis superque.
quam magnus numerus carnuli missorum
Latebrosae laborat Nigeriae
inter locorum Lybissi minuores
et quaerentes dictatorum viduas;
aut quam aureum WOWum, cum sumptus est,
simulata emit arma ludoribus:
tam te augea multa augere
vesano satis et super Catullo est,
quae nec insidiatores numerare
possint nec infrapontes fascinare.

– o0o –

You ask, Lesbia, how many +1’s
Of yours would be enough and more for me.
So many as the spammers
labor in secretive Nigeria
between the URL shorteners of Libya
and the acquisitive widows of dictators;
or as much as WOW gold*, bought
to purchase imaginary weapons for gamers:
+1ing you with so many +1’s
Would be enough and more for crazy Catullus
so that the lurkers couldn’t count
nor trolls envy them.

Originally posted on Making Light

Doggerel & Pastiches

The War-song of HAXZOR the troll

The right-wing blogs are sweeter,
But the left-wing blogs are fatter
And so we deemed it meeter
To go and troll the latter.

We picked an angry topic
To maximize the drama:
Disputing, all myopic,
The birthplace of Obama

Earnestly we started
As though we really meant it
So that the tender-hearted
Our right to ask defended.

The fiercer questioned harder
Suspecting our intention.
Our leader played the martyr
Which led to his suspension.

We knew the mod was reading
And so we changed our focus,
To trollery proceeding
While all the posters smote us.

We filled the thread with swearing
And flooded it with stockings.
We taunted them past bearing,
Decried each other’s blockings.

At last the thread was locked down
So laughing, we retreated
Another website knocked down;
Another group defeated.

Returning to our own site
We mocked them for believing
The web is here to make light
What’s darkened by our griefing.

Originally posted on Making Light

Doggerel & Pastiches

The small site on tumblr.com

I will click through and go now, and go to tumblr.com
And a small blog build there, with simple comment thread;
A tag cloud will I have there, a button for the stumbler-on
And set out thoughts too long unsaid.

And I shall speak the truth there, for truth comes growing slow,
Growing from the first “hello world” post to Technorati ranks;
There all I say is heartfelt, and all my virtues show,
And threads are full of “Well said’s” and “Thanks”.

I will arise and go now, for always as I read
I see my own posts crowding the windows on my screen
While tabbing through my browser, or in my Twitter feed,
I see my face in the glossy sheen.

Originally posted on Making Light

Doggerel & Pastiches

This ae site

(Part of a poetry slam with Chris Clarke)

This ae site, this ae site,
So long as screen-light glowes,
Joke and jest and fire-fight,
The web preserve thy prose.

When thou from hence art AFK
To Ever September make thy way

If ever thou gavest a newbie grace
Here in comfort take thy place

If taunting newbies was thy thing
Lang may thou with griefing sting

From Ever September click away
To Blogosphere make thou thy way

If ever a stranger thou savéd from flame
Here will others for thou do the same.

If only thy friends were safe with thee
4chan is thy destiny.

From Blogosphere then click away
To Social Media make thy way.

If ever with links thou gavest credit
Thy posts and name be top on Reddit.

If links and credit thou oft left aside
Thy authorship be alway denied.

This ae site, this ae site,
So long as screen-light glowes,
Joke and jest and fire-fight,
The web preserve thy prose.

Originally posted on Google+, copied to Making Light.

Doggerel & Pastiches

Coming++

(Part of a poetry slam with Chris Clarke)

Raging and raging in the lengthening thread
The mood will not heed the moderator;
Rules sprout loopholes; the FAQ cannot answer;
Mere trollery is loosed upon the site,
The lambent prose is loosed, and everywhere
The assumption of good faith is crumbled;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some resolution is at hand;
Surely Going Viral is at hand.
Going Viral! Hardly are those words onscreen
When a vast image out of Fandom Wank
Troubles my stream: somewhere in the wilds of the net
A community with zeitgeist and common purpose,
A cause right and pitiless as the sun,
Is searching for a forum, while all their LJs
Trail threads of the approving, supportive THIS’s.
The tweets move on again; but now I know
That 287 TLDs of peaceful sites
Were vexed to nightmare by a raging thread
And what rough horde, its cause come round at last
Slouches toward my website to be borne?

Originally posted on Google+, copied to Making Light.

a blog by Abi Sutherland