Spam proves poetry is "something"

What kind of freakishy lame world produces messages like this?

Gwynne reaccomodates petite sucker Hereford composes bright underbrush

Lewinsky topples curious periwinkle Freddi poultices faint julep

Rodina smocks obnoxious molding Gwynne books outrageous septuagenarian

Gerek organizes curious learner Hereford backlights few baconer

Gannie rubberstamps fragile nightingale Lewinsky overornaments short gauger

Damn spam. Every technology we create gets abused by criminals and losers. Strange programs trying to trick us into replying, to steal our souls. We try to build tools to get our jobs done, to make our lives better, but instead we're sitting targets, victimized, under constant attack ... in fact, I spent two hours today overhauling someone's online forum which had been maliciously hacked. What if a few years from now we have to spend 8 hours a day doing maintenance and security tasks. When would we find time to do any real work?

On the other hand, these messages (from my archives of ridiculous emails) shows how poetry is more than just a heap of words. It's easy to show what poetry isn't. Much harder to explain what it is. When I write poems, it seems to me that there is a stream of ideas in front of my eyes, almost tangible, and that my task is to pull things out of the stream, capture them, make them permanent. I don't judge the things, just record them. Luckily, all minds share a certain amount of wiring, so the efforts can be understood by some percentage of readers. Transferred. Task completed.

2024 note: this was the intro to my newsletter Dark Windows #10, but since that since has been gone for years, I have added it to the flow of this blog.