Dear reader, enclosed you find my latest spam poem. Each line is verbatim from a spam comment (including typos). The meme pool had comprised about 400 spam comments collected in the past three weeks.
This time I forced myself to compile the poem extremely fast, scrolling through these comments in Data-from-Star-Trek-style and letting my subconsciousness decide. Therefore I call that sub-genre Postmodern Science Fiction Inspired Spam Poetry Devoid of Meaning.
I did not select phrases with less than 4 words. This rule is optional, not part of the Rules of the Cult – see historical information below – and I did not make up the last sentence of the poem, even the emoticon is genuine!
searching for sanskrit tattoos
too enforced a Political platform
that roam across the surface over periods of numerous millions of years
Your house is valueble for me
Good luck for the next!
Use your music or television as a continuous background noise
Are you sure concerning the supply?
Teeth are not made of bone
Will there be a part 2?
If you are inside the horizontal scenery
The caribbean have an infinitely more elementary reach
The instruments that lag in real life, lag correctly
I lost track of what I had been performing
A creative bent of mind and an eye for detail
to a great extent kind of free in bizarre grades of refinement
Such is the case, you must purchase tokens
but eventually you have to deliver
Could it be only me or does it look like a few of these remarks come across like they are written by brain dead visitors? :-P
Historical context for new readers:
I crafted my first search term poems and spam poems some months ago in my Mad Scientist’s Garage – MacGyver-style, typical engineer’s poetry.
I have also been the chronicler of the Early Spam Poetry Community. This was my write-up of the dawn of Spam Poetry and Search Term Poetry and I had the honor to review the first on spam poetry recently.
More recently spam poets entered the stage who really know how to handle languages made spam poetry real poetry (Voice from the future – both links offline now – spam poetry is ethereal and fleeting.)
The Nasty Commenter Spam Poem: A comment that haunted many bloggers – now dissected and disarmed. You can also see how the spammosphere reacts to the poem!
An Android Girl Coming of Age or a Conversation With God: The first poem I am aware of that contains a story, a dialogue. I have also learned how spam poetry works from the analysis in this article: Like regular poetry, the words already exist; they are just waiting to be put together in the right order.
elkemental Force 
Apparently teeth are the only part of your body that doesn’t heal itself…. there’s a free fact for ya ;)
Thanks for the free fact! I have already considered ‘comment poetry’ in addition to spam poetry or search term poetry!
I leave this for you, as a spam poetry expert you will enjoy not only the poem but the presentation:
http://johnbalaya.wordpress.com/2013/05/10/poetry-from-the-spam-filter-seven/
Thanks a lot, Michelle! Thus the spam poetry community is bigger than I thought!
Great performance :-) though I had imagined “my” spam poem presenters to have a British accent. I’d like to hire John Cleese!
… probably dressed in a Vogon costume reminiscent of the 1980s BBC Hitchhiker’s Guide to the galaxy show – when the Vogon captain reads his most horrible poetry in the universe to Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect.
I normally just delete spam comments, but the idea of making them into spam poetry appeals to me! Thanks for introducing me to the possibilities.
Thanks and welcome to the community :-) Looking forward to future poems of yours!
Recalls pre-computer days of a group of us young artists trolling through neighborhood trash for abandoned articles harboring some aesthetic nuance for any of us to create found art sculptures, a few of which accrued value over time. Your art develops inherent cognitive stature in cyber gibberish which then your audience invests with their own renewing insights. Brilliant niche.
Thanks :-) The sort of art you did in pre-computer days is still created today: http://www.recyclart.org/
Elke, I think you’ve found your real voice :>)
Someday I will respond to business-related e-mails in spam-poetry-style because I confuse WordPress and e-mail…
That would break the world…and you’ve already broken the Internet. Isn’t that enough?
Absolutely – yesterday the power grid here in Austria had serious issues triggered by a software problem. But I think my spam poem had caused a cyber attack spreading from the internet to control systems.
I love how the rules and/or the processes of the genre are becoming creative in themselves. I wonder if spam poetry is some sort of cultural appropriation, such as stealing from zombies? Is this what is implied by brain dead visitors? Thanks for your comment to the Nasty Commenter Spam Poem, “dissected and disarmed,” perhaps suggesting the poet is also a prose-consuming zombie? :)
One of the comments on “Android Girl” suggests spam poetry is like art from the scrap yard, and Johannes responded, making the connection to recycling. You’ve started a trend of renewable poetry, another connection of sorts to your work in renewable energy.
Yes, I should add it to our company’s portfolio :-) “Renewable energy and renewable poetry” – sounds great. Actually, I had already ventured into Search Term Poetry on our German (not too serious) “company blog” – our search terms resulted in nice “Engineer’s Poetry”.
Unfortunately we hardly have any spam on the German blog – I have not found the bait suitable for German spammers. I need to cross-check your theories on spam that you discussed recently with Johannes.
Yes, please do check those theories. I am only guessing as to what is going on with spamming. I laugh, “bait suitable for German spammers.” :)
This is wonderful, and I agree. It sounds as if the voices have fallen from a place of coherence into an unexplainable brain-deadness. Each stanza sounds to me like a proverb, something about the rhythm. Or maybe something you would find in fortune cookies produced by a psychopath.
Thank you for linking to my spam poem, and I am glad that you have enjoyed my little analysis of spam poem composition!
Thanks – this is a terrific metaphor: “something you would find in fortune cookies produced by a psychopath”. Probably we should start monetizing our spam poetry and sell them to Chinese restaurants. Actually, the German aphorisms in fortune cookies are not that far from spam poetry – they sound as if they had been translated automatically.
This gives me ideas … probably I should run my poetry through Google Translate … first to German and then back to English. Fellow spam poetry pioneer Alex Brown did some something similar, and he used a bunch of languages – acting on not exactly spam, but prose that you might consider close to spam:
http://alexanderbrown.info/2013/01/15/translational-metaphysics/
Hahahahaha. I would love to see my spam poems end up as people’s fortunes. That is an interesting idea! That certainly happens with a lot of the comments I receive.
Translating back and forth like that is almost like translating into a totally different cyber language, a language, perhaps, that only spammers can truly speak.
The link was very interesting, and funny! I am definitely going to experiment with this translation idea, see if anything worthy comes of it! Thank you!
Thanks, Johannes – I really appreciate your comments her! I am glad that serious writers as yourself (I have dug your awesome blog a bit yesterday!) do also enjoy such “playful nonsense” ((c) Michelle).
I love this playful nonsense, and do not believe that it is nonsense at all! I saw that you came through for some visits the other day. I appreciate it, and I am glad you liked what you read!
Teeth are not made of bone? Who knew ;)?
Probably those teeth you can buy from the spammer!
I wonder if he sells bottoms as well. I need an upgrade :)
Unfortunately spammers never reply when you reply to their comments (I tried this!) – so we cannot ask ;-)
… Because good androids have feelings too , red dwarf, kryten
Thanks, Bert ;-)
I needed to google this – this will lower my geek score: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kryten_%28Red_Dwarf%29
I watched some episodes while ill. Not all are good. But kryten visiting a counselor is a must see:
http:// www. youtube.com/watch?v=poMWgGC82bw
:-D Thanks – I think this was the first video ever embedded in a comment on my blog – what a premiere. I think this video perfectly suits a spam poetry post! I like his showing-off “ambivalence” in particular.
LOL :-)
Pure genius :)
Thanks a lot, Mike :-D But I owe to the spammers – it’s their poem :-)
Brain dead implies that they actually HAD a brain to begin with. Maybe brainless is a better word. ;)
As an experienced search term haiku-ist you spot the inconsistencies. I just felt I owe it to my spammers (in particular the one who submitted what became the last line of the poem) to use the verbatim quote as a header :-)
Also note that as you were the first to comment on my Douglas Adams Award, I thought it only appropriate that I be the first to comment on this, which may well be your magnum opus of spam poetry. :D
Thanks, Mark! My magnum opus… yes, it becomes harder and harder to meet the expectations of my readers. Probably I should stop creating spam poems now – it cannot get better. I leave spam poetry to the writers and English majors (really great poems linked at the bottom)!
Well, I should have said magnum opus, to date. I am not presumptuous enough to assume what you might produce in the future.
I should create a meta spam poem – created from the best snippets of the other spam poets’ poems ;->