#165: Our Phones Are Too Much With Us

This was too damn hard. Finally, I had to abandon Wordsworth’s awesome rhyme scheme because almost nothing rhymes with seven. At any rate, “The World Is Too Much With Us” is one of my all-time favorite poems and now I’ve gone and ruined it.  The poem, exactly as Wordsworth penned it, published in 1807, says as much about our cell phone addiction as my paltry offering does! I struggled with the fact that so much of the time I just wanted to leave the poem exactly as it was. The assignment today was to write a satire or parody based on a famous poem. The following is neither satire nor parody. Read the original after mine in the unlikely event that you don’t know the poem!

Our phones are too much with us; twenty-four seven,

texting and sexting, we lay waste our hours;—

Little we tweet that has any power;

We have surfed our minds away, a dead heaven!

This Sky that beckons with stars at eleven;

The friends standing next to us at all hours

Are all neglected now like weed choked flowers;

For this, our constant gaming; we are out of whack;

It moves us not. WTF! I’d rather be

A monkey climbing trees in a forest;

So might I, leaping from limb to odd limb

Feel a part of a thriving, singing chorus;

and I’d laugh at people, all distant and dim;

who from their stupid smart phones can’t divorce.