Boot

I cannot tell you how overjoyed I was to rediscover this poem. First written to be performed at a student open mic night, I gave it a thorough edit and submitted it a year later as part of my final Creative Writing handover (hence the rationale, which is about as good as explaining a joke ever is). This poem is in no way dirty, so take your filthy mind out the gutter.

You turn me on, you really do,

You start my parts a-whirring too,

I don’t take long, at your request-

For I was built to run the best.

You turn me on, prepare to load,

I run my digits down your node,

You know which buttons must be pressed,

Your server’s up, to be addressed.

You turn me on, my plastic gloss

Does something special to your DOS,

As you can tell, I’m well equipped,

Show me your disk when you’ve unzipped.

You turn me on, my drive is hard,

I know you game; I’ve read your card.

Insert that floppy in my A:\\

And keep your eyes on my display.

You turn me on, but can you pass?

You’ve gained permission to my – assistance required!

But worry not, the error goes-

You chose OK, and not to close.

You turn me on; I make you smirk,

Though really you should be at work.

You’ve had your fun, so you abort,

But shove a dongle in my port!

You turn me on, but you forgot-

Compatible? Oh, this is not!

Denied the function, awkward cough,

You pull it out, and turn me off.

An experiment in adhering to metric structure, this iambic tetrameter is a poem that I edited constantly to comfortably fit the stresses, line lengths, and theme of the piece. The name ‘Boot’ is in reference to booting a computer up. Various double entendre and innuendo riddle this poem, as a sexual illusion is the theme of it. Where my poem sounds lewd or conjures adult imagery, it is always just computing terminology. This idea behind the poem, it takes the genre of comedy – to further illustrate this, I even included a line that is discordant with the rest of the piece, and from this unexpected change in rhythm and beat, more humour is generated.