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Lyndon Hood: In Which My Computer Develops A Bug

In Which My Computer Develops A Bug

By Lyndon Hood
First published on Werewolf


Click for big version.

When I arrived at the office this morning I noticed the strangest thing.

I had, as is my way, left my workstation on over the weekend with a view to getting right back into it on Monday morning. This was not to be. What stopped me in my tracks was a strange message I found typed into the open window of my word processor of choice.

It was poorly capitalised and punctuated - as if it had, for example, been written by a very determined medium-sized insect flinging itself against the keys one by one. I'm reluctant to speculate what it means – not the content (which seems to refer to a remark from new Republican congressman Roger Marshall) so much as the implications regarding life after death, animal consciousness, and me having to get my keyboard santised.

The text I found was as follows.

*
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well here we are again its
me a writer of fancifully insightful newspaper columns reincarnated
for sins of omission and commission but
mostly because of the universal arrow of irony
into the body of a cockroach
boss i have information regarding a certain politician
from the united ha states
though he was not the first quoting
jesus the poor you will always
have with you as if this proved
we should give up on whole question
of poor people and instead concentrate
perhaps on accumulating wealth or dying
with the most guns boss
my past lives rise up from spiritus mundi
like a careless mouthful of river water
from the gullet i channel them
i am an extra small
medium hence all
this poetry in one life i was
o irony my cruel mistress a free verse poet but
my information arises on account of i was in another life
in the disciple line not one of the big four but
i was definitely right in there and let me tell you
this is not what any of us understood
our lord and savoiur to be getting at
at the time
i will leave the finer points to biblical scholars but there
used to be lightning for that kind of thing is all i am saying
if i had to suggest an analogy and here lo
i summon that poet who i mentioned i was in a former life
it is like if some
body who was for instance in charge of the actual country was
of the opinion the young people
were too screwed
up to hold
down
a job
and he chose to view this alleged fact
as an excuse
and not
an endictment

boss being a cockroach is not the
metaphysical party i had whimsically imagined
if some of those apple cores happened
to fall behind the bin
it would be much appreciated

don

*******

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