Spam Is The New Poetry

I have been having some weird e-mail experiences lately.

At work I discovered an all day event on my Outlook calendar that I had no recollection of accepting. Mine was the only name on the appointment. It read John Smith NLM Important Don't Forget. Clearly I have already forgotten and therefore will not be attending this all day event.

I don't even know a John Smith.

What does NLM stand for?

Your guess is as good as mine. No one I work with has any idea what it means. The appointment happens tomorrow. I will keep you posted.

A more poetic exchange is coming to me via my AOL e-mail account. Most of the time these emails show up in my spam folder and when you weed through them they are come-ons for online pharmaceutical sales. Even the subject line tells you that:

From Me with Flonex

Listen to the body of the e-mail:

Good day.

look

to bring Grav Bent here, sheadded in the same light and

course non-alcoholic since his traveling this entire

Simple child of nature that you are, Inskipp said,

Uh huh.

This was followed by a handy chart telling me the cost of various drugs such as Viagra. (Who told them I needed Viagra, who? That's a cruel lie and you know it!)

Then there is the one entitled I like Tetracycline?

Apparently there is some doubt as they have included a question mark.

I like tetracycline when I have an infection of some sort and to treat certain diseases (again, who is spreading this vicious untruths about me to the online pharmacies?)

This one has another poetic and mysterious message:

Good day.

look

Well, well old chicken-hearted revealed at last. Rough and

he had never made a sound.

concealed compartments or drawers built into your steel

Is it just me or does this have a certain e.e. cummings meets Richard Brautigan thing going on? I especially like concealed compartments or drawers built into your steel. I think we've all felt like that before, haven't we?

There is one called Do You Like Protonix? that has a bit of a sci-fi bent to it:

Good day.

look

read the code words carefully, shaping them with his

equidistant. What was more important was the fact that

Get the Communications Officer in here at once, I shouted

They had me at equidistant. That one gives me chills.

This one is my favorite:

Good day.

look

removed my earlier bathing desire. There was a deep

would have penetrated it by now. With this realization

the beginning. It was different from the feeble animal

I like the way the poet is so polite and always begins with "Good day."

From there this particular poem takes us on a journey into the spam writer's soul.

Apparently he had thought about taking a shower, but has since had that notion undone is some fashion. Perhaps the water has been turned off? He does not say except to note, "There was a deep."

An aspiration to penetrate something is followed by the realization that "the beginning" was different from the "feeble animal."

How come the pharmacist at Walgreens never speaks in Haiku?