Once upon my home PC, while I pondered weak and weary
Over the strange and curious images on its screen.
As I sighed, nearly sinking, suddenly there came a blinking,
As of someone who was winking, winking in my thinking machine.
Tis some virus, I decided, winking in my stinking machine,
Only that or too much caffeine.

Ah distinctly it did seem, it had been last Halloween,
Since I’d run out of my computer’s vaccine.
Desperately I started drinking, verily my mood was sinking
Succumbing to the horrid jinxing, jinxing that had intervened,
Between my thinking and my blinking damn machine.
When it’s fixed, I’ll be serene.

And the maddening, endless pestering from the fan’s incessant festering,
Annoyed me, destroyed me, with curses worse than vitroline.
So that now to stop the screeching, there I stood beseeching,
Tis some virus making my computer scream,
Some unclean virus making my computer scream.
It must be silenced, where’s the vaseline.

Presently my thoughts grew clearer and the screen seemed somehow nearer,
Then I said, “you box from hell, death you face by the guillotine”,
For my brow is truly wrinkling at your incessant mindless winking
And the never ending blinking, that comes out your glassy mien.
Get the drift, you piece of shit, it’s gasoline that’ll make you clean.

It sure felt good to vent my spleen.

Back and forth, turning, pacing, confused and puzzled, I stood facing,
Vibrant visions of such precision that no mortal man had seen,
But my courage started shrinking, lost in feelings, mindless, stinking,
And on the screen, one word blinking, was the stinking word, “Shrudline”.
This I muttered, the screen then fluttered with the single word, “Shrudline”.

What the fuck did that word mean.
It was enough to make me scream.

All around my study peering, all my soul within me fearing,
Soon again I saw the blinking, somewhat brighter it did seem.
Surely, said I, some demon dances in my damned computer’s screen.
Let me see then, what it could be then, affecting my PC’s hygiene.

Is it some computer plague, little known and sadly vague, requiring years in quarantine,

Or some kind of deep intrusion making an unholy fusion with the core of my machine.

Eventually my task grew clear of how to rid myself of fear from this evil unforeseen.

I just threw it in the damned latrine.
And as I flushed, I heard a scream.

Thank God this poem is just a dream.
Nothing more than what it might seem.

For edgar, evermore.