An Obsolete Thinking Machine

by Jerry Glenn Hartwig

What do you do when your CPU spews
a cumulus cloudlet of smoke,
your bytes fall to bits, while your memory quits,
and processing speed is a joke?

Your motherboard crashes with frequent hot flashes
making your chipset a grump;
which stutters in pain, but however it strains,
you can’t get your data to dump.

When you watch Tina Turner your DVD burner
sounds like its grinding its gears;
though you’re sure that it’s able your networking cable
hasn’t made a connection in years.

Your disk has an abscess, your ROM’s random access,
the speaker’s developed a cough;
your IP is barred plus your software’s grown hard
while your hard drive’s decidedly soft.

Sound hasn't a prayer, your audio player's
contracted an untimely glitch;
your transformer's tired, your password’s expired.
Damn it! Old age is a bitch.

Jerry Glenn Hartwig  is an alumnus of Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, and he enjoys many diverse activities, including photography, martial arts, computers, horseback riding, music, and building cars. His greatest love, however, is writing. He edited The Buckeye Anthology, an on-line anthology of formal poetry, and he currently resides in Fairfield, Ohio.