And I opened DANTE’S INFERNO and begged the muse
For enough focus to read the text, though it was illumined
By neither Amazon Kindle nor Mac iPad.…
But midway through my night’s reading,
I became lost in the gaudy woods called Internet.
And headless, undead sparrows Twittered in the trees.
And I was accosted by three babbling beasts,
That tempted my ADD and would not let me again ascend the hill.
MySpace yowled and prowled in sparkly leopard spots.
Facebook growled, opening his mouth wider than perdition,
And the souls of slaves worked Sisyphean farms in his maw.
And, most dreadful of all, YouTube loped and howled,
Her belly full of feral wretches who wrote comments on her distended skin.
I read the idiot scrawl and it said, with no cheer,
ABANDON ALL HOPE, YE WHO ENTER HERE…