I Hate Your Job

[Edit: Apparently, this was done in 2004 in the New Yorker. I hadn’t seen that when I wrote this, and I still haven’t seen it. At least it’s not a Ziggy cartoon…]

(This is a parody of the famous Wallace Stevens poem “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”)

I
Among those office workers,
The only lively thing
Was the screen of the Blackberry.

II
I was of three minds,
Like a Treo
Or a trio of three Blackberries.

III
The Blackberry whirled in the autumn winds.
IT was a small part of the pantomime.

IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a Blackberry
Are none.

V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The Blackberry ringing
Or just after.

VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.
Though interesting,
I returned to my Blackberry.

VII
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the Blackberry
Can render those birds
on a color screen instead?

VIII
No noble accents
Or lucid, inescapable rhythms;
I know, therefore,
That the Blackberry is involved
In what I know.

IX
When the Blackberry flew out of sight,
It splashed, the center
Of many circles
in the pond.

X
At the sight of Blackberries
Stalling traffic at a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.

XI
He flew over Connecticut
In coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
As he played the game
“The Shadow of His Equipage”
on his Blackberry.

XII
The suit is moving.
The Blackberry must be driving.

XIII
It was busy all afternoon.
It was ringing
And it was going to ring.
The Blackberry sat
in the holster on his hip.

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