By Chase Duffy
Attention and honor, both battled for
As man’s sweet ways are lost in bloodless war.
Gorgeous people and malignant machines
Wage their small war every day, unseen.
And yet, for these men I still do grieve
Like God did the Fall of Adam and Eve
Or fleet-footed Achilles did his heel
When that fated arrow’s hard tip of steel
Pierced through and brought him to his knees.
Virgil, Milton, Homer I aim to please
And every bard and poet of mankind
With this amazing tale of fate by design.
Those malignant machines forged in white fires
Taken from Hades, sold to keen buyers.
Grace and kindness from fair Calliope
A muse so wise, eloquence bestow me
as I compose this epic tale and sing
Of the pitfalls such a small thing can bring.
Start I will with our tales’ lovely young maid
Whose beauty was unmatched, edges ever laid.
Her figure was like marble chiseled by
The deft hands of Rodin or Brancusi.
Her soft skin, ever-shining in the sun
Was aphrodisiac to anyone.
And her dazzlingly-dominant eyes
Lovely, soft, demanding respect yet wise.
These eyes held the power of fire and ice
Crafted by Allah before birth and life
He placed in her head these mighty brown orbs
To shiver men’s souls when in her gaze they’re absorbed.
Nunc, the dazzlingly-dominant eyes
Flitted from malignant machine to guise.
A guise of heeding and comprehension
One that hides a gross lack of attention.
Arenas of people, all shouting at
Once. Entertainment in any format.
Here, the unseen war wages on longer
Though, our lovely Heroine is stronger.
Abandoning arenas, she returns
To wealths of Knowledge before class adjourns.
Twenty, maybe thirty minutes remained.
In this time, with malignant machine tamed
She turned her attention to note-taking
She drank in the knowledge, brain awaking.
The lecturer ranted and roared, spewing fire
Facts were kindling, and class was his pyre
Through all this, her pen spewed flames on her page
Saving the embers, capturing their rage.
And those eyes, so powerful and so strong
Now split between board and paper, along
The same line of vision once split between
Lecturer and her malignant machine.
Though, soon enough the teacher’s fire ran out
Everyone packed up and went about
Their daily lives and drab, boring routines.
Our divine maiden strode out like a queen
And yet, not twenty paces from the scene
She went to check her malignant machine.
Not all things it brings are negative though
Messages from her love made a smile grow
And spread ‘cross her cheeks, illuminating
Her face, causing a light, bright and blazing.
So bright that commoners briefly lost sight
That returned to them once she took her flight.
Onward she went to her lover, soon wife
As she glides on clouds, no hint of strife.
And yet, Hades’ fire still burning inside
The malignant machine, begins to rise.
Now, a crow flew in a perfect nosedive
Breaking its beak, neck, no chance ‘twas alive.
Not but five feet from her lovely figure
She stopped and thought on this grisly picture.
Did shake our fair and lovely heroine
But ‘twas not ‘nough to keep her from machine.
An arena she went to, yelling ‘bout
The odd thing she saw, almost out of doubt.
All of a sudden, from this arena
She’s snatched, finding herself ‘mongst hyenas.
In this lair, the pit of hell beneath
Crossing the styx, a witness to demons.
Pain, death, narcotics and other vices
Danced across the screen, all naming prices.
Seeing harlotry, drugs and heads removed
The worst of technological abuse
Our heroine, shocked quickly abandoned
Through ivory gate, horn gate long cancelled.
For everything down here had long been false
Nothing true enough, all riddled with faults.
Back from the land of the dead and depraved
Her ecstatic mood was markedly caved.
But restored upon sight of her lover
None other could have helped her recover
So drastically quick from sudden horror
Seeing her was the utmost restorer.
And yet, while technically in the same space
Our heroine’s love had like guise on face
To the one our beautiful heroine
Had worn at her class’ early beginning.
Her dazzlingly-dominant eyes flared
And with her long gaze, her lover she dared
To break looks, turn to malignant machine.
Her lover held, then twitched away it seemed
Before truly fixing her eyes back on
Our heroine’s mighty look full of brawn.
This battle of attention ‘tween the two
Has fated value, for me and for you.
And of course for our heroine, her lover
Too. For we are doomed to truly suffer
If we can’t give our loved one’s attention
Then Heaven will be out of contention.
But her dazzlingly-dominant eyes
Do not allow that option to arise.
She wins over her lover and her soul
Not bending to the Apple or fool’s gold
Now, war-weary and tired from travel
Our fine heroine starts to unravel.
Falling into her lover’s outstretched arms
She picks up her cell phone and turns it off.
