Power Down!
After Poe’s “The Raven.” I will learn how to turn off the phone
After “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe (1845)
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
The quaint and curious buttons I’d forgotten on my phone—
While I nodded, nearly napping, I essayed to try a tapping,
As if I were gently rapping, rapping at my power button.
“Let this be right,” I muttered, “tapping at my power button—
Only this and nothing more.”
Indistinctly I did whistle while thumb-typing an epistle
And each separate glowing pixel smiled like a cheerful ghost.
Eagerly I wished the morrow—vainly I had tried to borrow
Ways to Candy Crush my sorrow—drat that forgotten button—
Drat the rare and radiant button whom the angels once named “off” —
Nameless here all of a sudden.
I’m not a teenager any longer, but my skills were feeling stronger.
“Sir,” voiced I, “or Madam, robot heart I do implore—
Fact is, I was napping, and so gently tried I rapping,
And so faintly tried I tapping, tapping at my power button,
That I scarce was sure you heard me”—here I flicked the…
