The poem that won a phone
So a guy at work posted to the internal poetry discussion list saying he'd give away his Nexus S (our holiday gift phone) to whomever posted the best Android-related poem. I was amused by the contest entries but didn't think much of it until Coworker A posted a pretty clever Ozymandias pastiche and Coworker B responded with "[Coworker A] Keats has spoken." I felt like just pedantically correcting him but realized that would be rude and if I wanted to satisfy my pedantic impulse I should do it more playfully. So I responded with:
"Nah, that's Shelley. Keats would be:
Bright phone, would I were shiny as thou art--
Not in lone splendour calling in the night
And clicking, with a camera lens apart
Like Samsung's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving icons at their priestlike task
Of app selection round the Market's shores,
Or scanning through the new soft-fallen mask
Of barcodes on the products at the stores,
No-- yet still shiny, still unbreakable,
Pillow'd upon my holster's padded nest,
To feel forever its soft cradling swell,
Awake forever to a pager test,
Still, still to hear a ringtone as a breath
And so browse ever-- or else crash to death."
This was immediately declared the contest winner. I feel sort of sheepish about displacing the people who actually, like, meant to enter the contest. Nonetheless it brightened my day. :)
"Nah, that's Shelley. Keats would be:
Bright phone, would I were shiny as thou art--
Not in lone splendour calling in the night
And clicking, with a camera lens apart
Like Samsung's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving icons at their priestlike task
Of app selection round the Market's shores,
Or scanning through the new soft-fallen mask
Of barcodes on the products at the stores,
No-- yet still shiny, still unbreakable,
Pillow'd upon my holster's padded nest,
To feel forever its soft cradling swell,
Awake forever to a pager test,
Still, still to hear a ringtone as a breath
And so browse ever-- or else crash to death."
This was immediately declared the contest winner. I feel sort of sheepish about displacing the people who actually, like, meant to enter the contest. Nonetheless it brightened my day. :)